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zorroloco 06-Nov-09, 19:38	minors doing life w/o parole! wtf? for killing her pimp! There are approximately 225 juveniles in California serving a life without parole sentence. California has the worst racial disparity rate in the nation for sentencing juveniles to life without parole. Black youth are given this sentence at 22 times the rate of white youth. A number of California cases have recently been highlighted in the media due to the background of the juveniles who received the sentences, and the circumstances surrounding their crimes. One such case involves Sara Kruzan, now 28. She was raised in Riverside by her abusive, drug-addicted mother. Sara met her father only three times in her life because he was in prison. Since the age of 9, Sara suffered from severe depression for which she was hospitalized several times. At the age of 11, she met a 31-year-old man named G.G. who molested her and began grooming her to become a prostitute. At age 13, she began working as a child prostitute for G.G. and was repeatedly molested by him. At age 16, Sara was convicted of killing him. She was sentenced to prison for the rest of her life despite her background and a finding by the California Youth Authority that she was amendable to treatment offered in the juvenile system. (See video of Sara Kruzan: ilovepwnage.com ). “Life without parole means absolutely no opportunity for release,” said Senator Yee. (of California) “It also means minors are often left without access to programs and rehabilitative services while in prison. This sentence was created for the worst of criminals that have no possibility of reform and it is not a humane way to handle children. While the crimes they committed caused undeniable suffering, these youth offenders are not the worst of the worst.” “As a society we’ve learned a lot since the time we started using life without parole for children,” said Elizabeth Calvin, a children’s rights advocate with Human Rights Watch. “We now know that this sentence provides no deterrent effect. While children who commit serious crimes should be held accountable, public safety can be protected without subjecting youth to the harshest prison sentence possible.”
changeling 07-Nov-09, 00:20	.......... "Only in America" springs to mind.
markallen 07-Nov-09, 02:10	hmm , what an abomination!!
zorroloco 07-Nov-09, 07:46	not only in america while the us has over 2000 minors serving life w/o parole, the rest of the world combined has 12. "home of the free," baby! California's 180 youth sentenced to life without parole are some of 2,225 nationwide, according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.... California has 15 times as many youths serving life without parole as the rest of the world. Outside of the United States, there are some 12 young offenders currently serving life sentences with no possibility of parole in just three countries. www.usawatch.org here is some more info: www.cnn.com
daley 07-Nov-09, 07:46	... that's really sad!!!
chaz5 07-Nov-09, 08:51	Zorro ... ... obviously, minors probably do commit heavy crimes in other countries that in the U.S. have been punishable by LW/oP ... so how do those countries "manage" similar situations? Is the issue solely the "w/o parole" aspect of it? Also, at what age does a young person actually become responsible for their actions, and if accountable, to what extent? ... I'm not speaking about legally here, and I'm aware there may be differences from state to state ... I'm only seeking to understand how well/poorly we manage our challenges in this area ... and why. As an active, full time volunteer in a "troubled youth home" here, I'm keenly aware of how attitudes are pretty firmly entrenched by age 14-15 ... and how attributable the child's upbringing has brought him/her to this point. These youth have committed serious crimes, but not Lw/oP type offenses. Yet, even the professionals here conclude that only one in three (at best! ... statistics suggest one in six to one in eight) may live an adult life without further incarceration of some sort. My job is to focus on that "one" ...
illinawek 07-Nov-09, 10:22	I've got a case right now which involves a minor who got into a number of fights with a 26 year old Parolee who lives down the street. Here is this guy who is terrorizing a 15 year old boy and his 12 year old brother. In one of the fights the 26 year old went into the living room of the house to fight the boy and the mother jumped out of the bathtub naked to save him. No one will do anything about this guy who clearly needs to be back in Prison. Well finally the 15 year old got a gun and shot this Parolee in the head. Rather than give this kid a community service medal, they charge him as an adult. Prosecuters greatly abuse this power of charging children as adults. I wish they would get rid of it.
kingofpawns 08-Nov-09, 23:33	And you wonder why... California is nearly hopelessly broke. Over 10 billion dollars a year goes into keeping the largest prison population in the world locked up.
chaz5 09-Nov-09, 08:31	There is a purpose ... ... for prisons. Those who commit heinous crimes and cannot be trusted to live within society, need to be separated from it. Instead, in so many places, we have created expensive refuges to assuage a population unwilling to deal with either the underlying reasons why a large number of those incarcerated are inadvertently there ... or to force a self-proclaimed moral standard onto those who seem to violate our undefendable values.

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