Cruelty in Isolation

23. April 2009 by Mary Ellen.

The first time my friend Jacob Ind went to Colorado State Penitentiary, our state’s Supermax, he was 18. He emerged at 25. He returned last year at the ripe old age of 30.

I visit Jacob every other week. Rules allow us three hours. Even though we’re separated by plate glass and concrete blocks Jacob’s legs remain shackled and he sits upon an uncomfortable metal stool that’s bolted to the floor.

Jacob seldom complains. He’s always cheerful and engaged. During our last visit we discussed Shakespeare, which he’s reading and I largely haven’t. He wonders why Shakespeare’s characters are talking about “garters” and asks whether the term had the same meaning then as now. We discuss politics – we’ll never agree–, the atmosphere in his pod – too many fishes who don’t know how to do time –, the status of his case – nothing going on –, whether he might soon be moved back into g.p., and two books I’ve recently read, I’M PERFECT, YOU’RE DOOMED and LOSING MY RELIGION. He’s witty, insightful, occasionally profound — and is often far more coherent than his visitor.

Occasionally, when I remember where we’re at and that such manufactured isolation can create psychosis, hallucinations, and mental, emotional and physical deterioration after weeks, let alone years, I study Jacob for signs of deterioration. Outside visitors help prisoners maintain sanity, studies show. That’s good. Jacob has dropped at least 50 pounds but he says he meant to lose weight. I think that’s okay. After his last stint at CSP – seven years–, he was pretty wild-eyed and it took him a while to get re-adjusted to other humans, not to mention larger spaces. But since Jacob’s not drooling, doesn’t laugh inappropriately or display any weird facial tics, maintains good eye contact – though he’s actually close to blind from years where his vision was confined to very short distances — and can speak coherent sentences, hey, let’s give solitary confinement a big thumbs up!

Control units must be a-okay. Otherwise Supermax prisons wouldn’t be increasing as inexorably as our national debt.
Atul Gawande, author of Hellhole: (The New Yorker magazine ), disagrees.

In a long article that is as appalling as it is powerful, Gawande lays out the case against prolonged isolation – whether for prisoners of war or prisoners of our courts.
Gawande cites a study out of California’s notorious Pelican Bay where Professor. Craig Haney noted that after time in isolation, many prisoners began “to lose the ability to initiate behavior of any kind—to organize their own lives around activity and purpose… Chronic apathy, lethargy, depression, and despair often result. . . . In extreme cases, prisoners may literally stop behaving,” becoming essentially catatonic.”

We humans need social interaction. We need the presence and companionship of our fellow humans. When we don’t receive it, we go insane.

Yet…this is public policy in America.

This is what we are doing to Jacob. This is what we are doing to more than 1,000 prisoners in Colorado. This is what we are doing to at least 25,000 other prisoners around the country. (And another 50-80,000 in isolation within regular prisons.)

John McCain was a P.O.W for 5 ½ years. His symptoms and experiences were very similar to those we deplored when delivered by the Vietnamese, and proudly initiated in America’s prisons.

From Hellhole: “When P.O.Ws are isolated, they “begin to see themselves primarily as combatants in the world, people whose identity is rooted in thwarting prison control.”

We call that anger, that determination to foil the enemy “heroic” when practiced by prisoners of war. We produce movies about their bravery. We snap up their memoirs. We applaud their courage and grit on Fox News

“According to the Navy P.O.W. researchers, the instinct to fight back against the enemy constituted the most important coping mechanism for the prisoners they studied. Resistance was often their sole means of maintaining a sense of purpose, and so their sanity. Yet resistance is precisely what we wish to destroy in our supermax prisoners. As Haney observed in a review of research findings, prisoners in solitary confinement must be able to withstand the experience in order to be allowed to return to the highly social world of mainline prison or free society. Perversely, then, the prisoners who can’t handle profound isolation are the ones who are forced to remain in it. “And those who have adapted,” Haney writes, “are prime candidates for release to a social world to which they may be incapable of ever fully readjusting.”

John McCain has spoken against conditions at Guantanomo. Has he EVER spoken out against conditions in the Supermax prisons in his home state? Have any of our politicians?

What have we the people become?

Prison officials maintain that long-term isolation cuts down on violence and is reserved for “the worst of the worst.” However, since the wholesale implementation of control units – and America is the only nation that uses control units so extensively – institutional violence has not decreased.

“Perhaps the most careful inquiry into whether supermax prisons decrease violence and disorder was a 2003 analysis examining the experience in three states—Arizona, Illinois, and Minnesota—following the opening of their supermax prisons. The study found that levels of inmate-on-inmate violence were unchanged, and that levels of inmate-on-staff violence changed unpredictably, rising in Arizona, falling in Illinois, and holding steady in Minnesota.”
States with fewer control units do NOT have higher rates of crime and violence.

The current buzz in corrections is, “Don’t present us anything unless you can show that it works.” Their only interest is in successful “evidence-based practices.”

Well, the evidence shows that control units don’t work. So why do we continue to think it’s perfectly okay to lock people away in rooms the size of a parking space for years on end?

We don’t…think, that is.

The rise in prison sentences has largely been pushed by liberals who fear being seen as soft on crime. How’s that for integrity? Using the least among us, using the most despised, to further political careers? As politicians have scapegoated prisoners – let’s remember that the rich and the politicans are seldom ensnared in the morass of our criminal justice system – they’ve also cut back on programs or other forms of rehabilitation. We can afford to build and staff regular and supermax prisons into infinity but we can’t afford to provide programs that would increase public safety and end recidivism. Those who want prisoners to exist on bread and water and spend their days on chain gangs or rotting in their cells without anything but cockroaches to keep them company get re-elected. Those who don’t lose. So we can’t really blame our representatives. We the people are driving their votes and their faux ourtrage. (Because most of them have known for many years these policies don’t work.) We’ve all happily conspired to create cesspools of violence and dehumanization and we don’t care – as long as we don’t have to see the results or nobody in our family ever ends up sleeping among the cockroaches.

What has happened to us as? We weren’t always so barbaric. Only in the last two decades have Supermax prisons become de rigueur. One hundred years ago our social conscience was more evolved.

Atul Gawande writes:

“In 1890, the United States Supreme Court came close to declaring the punishment to be unconstitutional. Writing for the majority in the case of a Colorado murderer who had been held in isolation for a month, Justice Samuel Miller noted that experience had revealed “serious objections” to solitary confinement:
“A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others, still, committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community.”

Yet, we in the 21st century with gritted teeth and flashing eyes declare that it’s perfectly okay to treat human beings worse than beasts.

Why are we so angry?

Why are we so heartless?

Why are we so short-sighted?

Other nations, after determining that isolation will never garner the desired results, have deep-sixed control units. Great Britain, which was infamous for its treatment of members of the Irish Republican Army, once used solitary confinement as a means to control the rebels.

It didn’t work. The violence inside prisons remained unchanged while related costs skyrocketed.

So what did the British do?

Unlike America where, when we determine something doesn’t work we throw more money at it and increase its usage, the Brits

“gradually adopted a strategy that focussed on preventing prison violence rather than on delivering an ever more brutal series of punishments for it. The approach starts with the simple observation that prisoners who are unmanageable in one setting often behave perfectly reasonably in another. This suggested that violence might, to a critical extent, be a function of the conditions of incarceration. The British noticed that problem prisoners were usually people for whom avoiding humiliation and saving face were fundamental and instinctive. When conditions maximized humiliation and confrontation, every interaction escalated into a trial of strength. Violence became a predictable consequence.

“So the British decided to give their most dangerous prisoners more control, rather than less. They reduced isolation and offered them opportunities for work, education, and special programming to increase social ties and skills. The prisoners were housed in small, stable units of fewer than ten people in individual cells, to avoid conditions of social chaos and unpredictability. In these reformed “Close Supervision Centres,” prisoners could receive mental-health treatment and earn rights for more exercise, more phone calls, “contact visits,” and even access to cooking facilities. They were allowed to air grievances. And the government set up an independent body of inspectors to track the results and enable adjustments based on the data.
The results have been impressive. The use of long-term isolation in England is now negligible. In all of England, there are now fewer prisoners in “extreme custody” than there are in the state of Maine. And the other countries of Europe have, with a similar focus on small units and violence prevention, achieved a similar outcome.”

So why do we happily continue spending money we don’t have on a policy that doesn’t work?

We are to blame. No one else. Politicians are voting for these tough-and-dumb-on-crime policies because we demand it, condone it or don’t give a rat’s butt about it. How can it be that we’ve so devolved as a nation? When did we become so self-absorbed and so mindlessly cruel and so mindlessly stupid – because we are getting the opposite outcomes that we supposedly intend — that we would allow torture to go on right under our noses? What is wrong with us? After 9/11 we trembled and swooned like 19th century heroines over the terrorists who, “Oh, please, sir, don’t!” might hurt us once again. Talk shows called for torture; we agreed. Opinion polls showed that the majority condoned or even applauded torture, just so long as it would make us safe. What cowards we have become! And the irony is, torture makes us LESS safe. Just like isolating and torturing our own makes us less safe. Most of the men and women locked down 23 out of 24 hours for years on end will come out of prison, after all.

Do you want someone who’s been locked down for years on end without programs or mental health treatment, who are fed a diet of oppression and hatred, coming to a neighborhood near you?

Of course you do. Because you demanded this. You voted for this. You’re fine with this—at least until you have a husband or a brother or a Jacob rotting away in a control unit somewhere.

Then you say, “This is awful.This is inhuman. We have to do something.”

I used to wonder what it would have been like to live in Nazi Germany. Would I have had the courage to speak up? Would I have risked my family’s life or my own to rebel against tyranny?

Possibly not.

Just as we don’t know how we would behave in situations or living in environments that caused many of America’s prisoners to be incarcerated, we can bluster about how courageous and strong and principled we would be fighting Nazis or terrorists or crime in our neighborhood, but the truth is far different.

A strong, courageous and moral people wouldn’t incarcerate more men and women than any other nation. We wouldn’t torture people and call it rehabilitation.

Such actions come from weakness and fear.

How low we’ve sunk.

UPDATE: Two weeks after penning this blog, Jacob was busted back from Level III to Level II. So the pattern begins again. Will it take Jacob another 7 years to work his way through CSP a second time? Whatever causes my friend to endlessly repeat this pattern I’m not capable of either understanding it or of fixing it. Perhaps all I can do is observe and report. And mourn.

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Recycle Our Trash…Throw Away Our Children

15. January 2009 by Mary Ellen.

 

 THE PENDULUM FOUNDATION

2860 South Circle Drive, Suite 123  Colorado Springs, CO 80903Phone: (720)314-1402www.pendulumfoundation.com

“In America we recycle our trash and throw away our children.”  Those words were spoken by a mother whose 16-year-old is serving life in prison without possibility of parole (LWOP). Her son was convicted in one of those “redneck” states, but his sentence isn’t unusual. America is the only nation on earth that sentences its children to die behind bars. We have thousands of throw-away children wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in prisons stretching from sea to shining sea.  Colorado is the first state to reverse that trend, by lowering life to 40 years. A modest beginning.  Thanks to a partnership among district attorneys, Rep. Cheri Jahn,  Governor Bill Ritter and  The Pendulum Foundation,  our Governor  also created the nation’s first juvenile clemency board, which has been universally lauded. With this act Governor Ritter and the board acknowledge that, from their brain development to their capacity for rehabilitation,  children are different from adults. Theoretically, those who were convicted as 14-15-16 or 17-year-olds deserve a second look.  

But political reality intrudes. 

We all have different versions of right and wrong. It seems wrong to me that a kid gets sentenced to life for a hit and run that generally garners probation or a few years in prison. Or that a 38-year-old son receives sixteen years for setting his father on fire over a minor argument (the dad later died), while a 15-year-old who kills his molesters is buried behind bars.   Others looked at the same set of circumstances and had no trouble trying, convicting and incarcerating those same cases.  I know several of these young prisoners and believe they can be rehabilitated. But we Americans are a merciless people. We talk about redemption but we don’t practice it. Certainly not for a gang kid who participates in a drive-by or a frightened  teen who cleans up for his friend after the friend kills his abuser. The facts are spun and re-spun on all sides. Not much compassion. A lot of hatred. And pesky political realities, such as: Where’s that 15-year-old’s constituency? Who will speak for him? Who even cares? 

I often ask myself, “If I were Governor Ritter would I EVER give any of these kids a commutation or clemency? What’s in it politically for him — beyond our assertion that redemption should carry as great a moral weight as retribution? Well, we believe we’ve found something that’s “in it” for everybody.  We can give some of these kids a second chance plus  promote public safety plus practice redemption and rehabilitation rather than retribution.

Our solution?  

Programs. 

Programs inside. And more programs inside. Cognitive behavior therapy. Life skills. College. Right now, young LWOPS, since they’re never coming out of prison, get few programs. However, the same bill that lowered life sentences also mandated these young prisoners get the same opportunities for programs as those who are eligible for parole.  Provide a rainbow of proven programs.  Not only will these programs make our young LWOPS far better candidates for a commutation or clemency, all studies agree such programs transform thinking and lives.  Once these offenders successfully complete all programs, we propose that they be given a conditional commutation. Young LWOPS would then  complete their re-integration into society via a privately funded  rehabilitation center. The entire process could take years. We don’t care. What we want to do is get them out of prison and firmly down the road to rehabilitation. Once upon a time– oh, say, 20 years ago–when America was a different nation, these kids  never got much prison time anyway. They received treatment, were rehabilitated and released back into society where they obeyed the laws,  worked hard, paid their taxes, and disappeared into middle-class society.  We ask that some of our young LWOPS receive that same opportunity. An opportunity for a second chance.

We believe that it’s long past time when we  recycle only  our trash.

We believe it’s  time we recycle our children, as well.  

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Juvenile Clemency Board in Colorado

6. August 2008 by Mary Ellen.

COLORADO : A LEADER IN JUVENILE JUSTICE

Coloradans have the opportunity to become worldwide leaders in what happens to juveniles when they are tried, convicted and incarcerated. To achieve this goal, Governor Ritter recently formed the first Juvenile Commutation and Pardon Board in the United States., Now, we believe it is time that he direct this Board and the Department of Corrections to create Juvenile Rehabilitation Programs, which can, and should, factor into commutation decisions for these juveniles.

Without question, Colorado must consider other civil justice policies than merely “throwing away the key” when a juvenile commits a crime. While the dictates of justice, and the considerations of victims are inarguable, we believe Colorado must also look at juvenile justice from a higher moral viewpoint than adult criminal justice.

Commutations for juvenile offenders are not the answer in every case, but to preclude commutations outright, as a matter of State policy, is to abrogate a cornerstone of our Constitution : that justice be meted out on the merits of each case - and not in the “one-punishment-fits-all” fashion we see today.

We believe that reduced sentences, in certain cases, are in the best interests of all Coloradans. By using Commutation as a potential reward for incarcerated juveniles, combined with a well organized series of programs for rehabilitation and education Colorado can become a leader in juvenile justice practice and a model for much-needed reforms.

Judges today, in cases of juveniles tried as adults, have few discretions to preclude unduly long sentences, or to factor rehabilitative potential in the punitive phase of a juvenile’s case. It may shock the sensibilities of most Coloradans to realize that there are dozens of juveniles now serving life without parole in Colorado prisons, and that these juveniles were charged as adults without any judicial role in that process, and were then sent to prison for life, with no judge ever being involved in the sentencing decision. These “lethal intersection” cases are a clear example of over-reaching prosecutors tipping the balance of powers in our State, without the citizenry ever realizing how unjust our system has become in these cases.

In the few cases where judges do still have some measure of sentencing discretion, the program options available for juvenile offenders are little more than a lock down boot camps. There is a place for boot camps in any juvenile justice program, but we believe these should be integrated with educational and rehabilitative programs that truly serve to redeem a juvenile offender while he or she pays the consequences of their actions by serving their sentence.

When a juvenile is tried and convicted , we as a State, must say,” We now have a duty, not only to punish this individual for the crimes they have committed, but to give them every chance for rehabilitation and education while serving their sentence. To otherwise return them to society without doing so, is a guarantee of a repeat cycle of failure and renewed criminal conduct.

Instead, in too many cases, unrestrained District Attorneys try them as adults, sentence them to extraordinarily long mandatory adult sentences, where they are incarcerated in adult prisons with no programs and no rehabilitation. We put these children into survival mode with the worst adult prisoners in our state, and keep them in warehouse facilities where the only “recreation” is violence.

No judge, no jury, no Governor, and no Parole or Commutation Board can know which juvenile will succeed in being rehabilitated and which will not. The way to find out, is to give them the opportunity. It is well said that morality and character cannot be infused, but rather, can only be illuminated. Custodial rehabilitation may be the only light some juveniles are ever given to rebuild their lives with. The best course is to give them the illuminating lights of rehabilitation and education, and measure their progress carefully. Lowering sentences does not have to mean automatic parole for unrepentant offenders. It should mean the opportunity for parole, if the juvenile is working towards true rehabilitation.

Compounding the problem is the fact that post-trial decision makers have very limited information as to which juveniles should receive consideration for a lowered or modified sentence. The only information entered into a juvenile’s in-custody file are negative indicators commonly known as incidents reports or write-ups. In fact, no system exists to report positive behavior, accomplishments while in custody, or rehabilitative progress. The only scoring done, is when the juvenile makes a mistake. Our government was not established to so unfairly prevent those who have fallen, from ever getting up, but that is the state of juvenile justice in Colorado today, and we believe this deserves attention and remedy.

Lest any Coloradan think these policies are only the problems of convicted criminals, you need only look at the cost of these policies that is borne by every citizen of our state, every single day. Our school graduation rates continue to fall, while our prison population continues to rise. While state spending on education over the past 10 years has increased by less than 21%, spending on prisons has increased more than 122%. When all our money is pulled from schools to build more prisons, it is no accident that our children follow. Case in point : merely housing the juveniles already sentenced to life without parole in our prisons today will cost the taxpayers more than $50 million dollars.

Colorado cannot afford the failed policies of the past.

That is why we call upon Governor Ritter to act. To rise above the failures of “throwing away the key”, and to implement policies and practices that balance all the diverse needs inherent in Colorado juvenile justice - the undeniable need for punitive sanctions for criminal conduct, the need for rehabilitation of juvenile offenders, and the need for the State to have policies which make moral and fiscal sense.

We believe Governor Ritter can and should direct the Juvenile Commutation and Pardon Board to make recommendations to the Department of Corrections as to which juveniles can be eligible for release programs after reviewing the file of each juvenile who asks for the program.

We believe that Governor Ritter should ensure that those who graduate from rehabilitative and educational programs then be eligible to apply to the Juvenile Commutation and Pardon Board for a reduced sentence.

Failing Executive Branch action, we believe this model should be put into law by the Legislature, so that judges can modify prison sentences for juveniles when they have earned eligibility.

Colorado can become a worldwide leader in Juvenile Justice. Not all, perhaps not even a majority, of the juveniles given such opportunities for redemption will succeed. Those that are redeemable, however, deserve the opportunity to work hard and earn a second chance. Not a free pardon. Not automatic parole. A second chance.

Who among us would deny this to someone who has paid a price for his crimes, and worked hard to earn this second chance?

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Sentencing Disparity for Juveniles

6. August 2008 by Mary Ellen.

When prosecutors and other proponents of locking kids up for life defend their position, they always maintain some version of the following:

“These are the worst of the worst.”

“A jury heard all the evidence and convicted them.” 

“You can’t just change the law. Victims would have to show up for endless parole hearings and would be re-traumatized.”

“We have to send a message so these punks will think twice before pulling the trigger.”

Today I’m going to tackle the opposition’s first “argument,” “These are  the worst of the worst.”

 

 No, they’re not.

 

We have kids serving life for a hit and run, who never pulled the trigger or knew that a crime was about to take place.  We have teens who killed their molesters. One young defendant was “the most severely abused child” social workers had ever seen. Some of these kids were obviously mentally ill when they were arrested and have grown worse since their incarceration.

 

 I know. I’m just making excuses for these kids. How dare I? 

 

Okay, but how about when it comes to adults? Why do grown men and women often get far lower sentences than juveniles?

Don’t believe me? Then how do you explain the following cases, which can be lifted from any Colorado newspaper on any given day?

 

A woman is convicted of shooting, dismembering and cannibalizing her boyfriend. Investigators find “bite-sized chunks of human flesh” in a cooking pot at the woman’s home. After10 years of treatment at the state hospital, the woman is allowed to leave,  “So long,” said the judge, “as she continues to take her medication and participate in therapy.”

 Now, we have kids who are bi-polar, borderline,  paranoid schizophrenic, who believe George Bush is going to pardon them and that their parents are the devil and who are suffering from post-traumatic stress from a lifetime of being sexually abused. Were they sent to a mental institution? Will they receive therapy? Will they be released so long as they take their medication and participate in therapy?

Not on your life.

Here’s another interesting story:

 A Colorado Springs man kills his friend and, following a plea bargain,  is sentenced to 16 years in prison. Police found the dead friend’s blood in the killer’s bedroom, the friend’s body in the crawl space of the killer’s house and a cigarette butt containing the killer’s DNA near the body. The killer denies knowing anything about his friend’s death. He also blames his problems on a long-time drug habit and said he robbed a bank – for which he was also charged—in order to pay off a drug debt.

So the guy gets a plea bargain from the same prosecutors who NEVER offer plea bargains to juveniles. The same prosecutors who say, “Abuse is no excuse. If you’re old enough to do the crime you’re old enough to do the time.” And, who have charged kids with first-degree murder on the most circumstantial of evidence. But when it’s an adult with a good attorney and when the adult has a drug habit and has to rob a bank and  takes full responsibility for his actions by denying he killed anybody, well, then 16 years is plenty of time to spend behind bars.

Previously I mentioned  the teen who’s serving life for a hit and run. Dietrick Mitchell’s been behind bars half his life now because he was 16, because, after accidentally hitting another teen  he turned himself in, because he was wrongly accused of being a gangbanger and because the accident took place late at night and Dietrick Mitchell was later found to have lousy eyesight. 

Of course he deserved life!

Think that’s an aberration? Here are a couple more hit-and-runs involving adults:

Forty-one-year Denver driver hits two pedestrians, killing one. The driver drags the dying man more than 600 feet. Apparently, the driver still had no idea that he’d hit anybody because he didn’t stop. Perhaps that’s the reason the judge charges the driver with “two counts of leaving the scene of an accident.” Do you think HE  spent any time in prison?

Once again, in Colorado Springs:

Pedestrian is struck by a Ford Expedition that doesn’t  even slow down following the fatal crash.  The defendant, 32-year-old Stony Ray Garcia,   has an extensive record, including more than 16 court cases involving two convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol, two convictions for driving with a suspended license, and many other cases including assault, larceny, theft, domestic violence, harassment and fraud.

 Because Mr. Garcia was no longer a teen he faced a grown up sentence – up to 10 years in prison. If only Dietrick Mitchell had an extensive arrest record and was a couple of decades older, he’d be back on the streets by now!

 

One of my favorite incidents involves Jeanne Smith, a former prosecutor and current head of Colorado’s juvenile clemency board, (which just turned down the first two juveniles who sought a reduced sentence after decades in prison). In the past, Ms. Smith also testified against Jacob Ind, one of our young LWOPS. Smith delighted in recounting to members of the judiciary committee the gruesome crime scene when Jacob killed his mother and step-father. Smith did neglect to detail  the lifetime of  physical, emotional and sexual abuse that the fifteen-year-old had suffered at the hands of his abusers before  killing them. (In Jacob’s case, motive doesn’t matter.) While Jacob Ind certainly deserved life without parole, Ms. Smith DID plea bargain the following adult murderer. This particular gentleman executed his girlfriend, cut up her body and threw the body by the railroad tracks.

 

Okay, so that crime isn’t nearly as heinous as Jacob’s.

 

Which is why, Jeanne Smith happily negotiated a prison sentence of twelve years.

 

And speaking of abused kids who kill their parents, we have two, Jacob Ind and Nathan Ybanez, serving life sentences. Fair enough. But what should the sentence be for a 38-year-old son who does the following to his 58-year-old father?

Throws a birthday party for Pops. Before the party Montoya the Younger douses Montoya the Older with kerosene, sets him ablaze with a cigarette lighter and says: “You are going to die today—happy birthday; you are the candle.” Several painful weeks later,  Montoya the Older expires. Being burned over your entire body has to be an extremely painful way to die, though Montoya the Younger’s lawyer described the fire as “an impulsive act” and says his client doesn’t think he’s guilty.

Let’s get this straight: kids are supposed to take full responsibility for their actions but adults aren’t — which may be the reason Martinez the Younger received a sentence of 16 years behind bars– with the possibility of parole after five.

Sixteen years seems to be a pretty standard sentence when an adult, rather than a teen, kills a family member. Here’s an adult, Matthew Schneider, whose 29-day-old son died from a brain hemorrhage caused by blunt force and shaken baby syndrome. Schneider admitted to causing his baby’s death  when he became “frustrated and snapped.”

While nobody had any sympathy for Jacob Ind and Nathan Ybanez, who were being raped by their parents before they became “frustrated and snapped,” guess it’s different when you kill a baby. 

“I don’t have any doubt in my mind what the right sentence is,” the judge said, before sentencing Schneider to 16 years. “It is not a light sentence. We have one huge lapse of judgment with tragic consequences.”

Killing a baby is merely a lapse of judgment. Killing your abusers merits you lifetime incarceration.

 Finally, there’s the problem of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We have kids who were riding in a car driven by far older gang members. The gang members commit  a drive-by, which results in death. The kid had nothing to do with the shooting, though he’ll get life without parole while the older gang banger will probably get a lesser sentence. (They’re smart enough to roll over on the younger ones or  “snitch” about other crimes and negotiate a deal.)  Okay, once again we have the following:

Twenty-five-year-old female buys the bullets that she knows her boyfriend is going to use to kill his ex-girl friend. Boyfriend DOES kill the ex-girlfriend. Judge says he has the option of giving the 25- year-old “two to six years in Community Corrections or an indeterminate time on probation.”

Kid in the back seat of a car gets life. Adult who buys the bullets to kill someone – sounds like accessory to me – gets a halfway house?

And this is justice? And these kids rotting behind bars are the worst of the worst?

America’s justice system has many different levels – one level for the rich and privileged and politically connected and another for the rest of us. One for whites and a far harsher one for blacks. And one that, when it comes to children, believes only in retribution.

Just ask Colorado’s 48 kids serving life without parole.

Just  ask the 2,300 13-14-15-16-and-17-year-olds across America who were sentenced to die in prison.

But who cares?

After all, they’re only kids.

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