Edwin Desamour's rescue mission

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By Solomon Jones
April 9, 2014

It seems so long ago now, the life of drug dealing, violence and retaliation that Edwin Desamour lived so recklessly.

That life was played out in the shadows of the West Kensington streets, where Desamour followed his father into the drug game. At just 16, it led Desamour to kill a man in a fight. He was convicted of third-degree murder, and did more than eight years in prison.

Desamour keeps a picture pinned to his office wall to remind himself of that past. In the photo, he is handcuffed. His head, covered with slick, straight hair, is slightly lowered; his face is clean-shaven, and his eyes are partially obscured. A police officer stands behind Desamour. Nothing, it seems, stands in front of him.

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Incarcerated kids deserve a second chance

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By Xavier McElrath-Bey
June 25, 2014

I went to prison for gang-related murder when I was 13.

My public defender was able to convince the judge to sentence me to 25 years, which was less than prosecutors sought but still nearly twice as long as I had been alive. I served 13 years. While in prison, I grew up, earned a college degree, and committed to working for change on behalf of the victim in my case. In short, I transformed.

This week, we mark the second anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. Alabama. Thanks to that case, it is now unconstitutional to impose a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole on a child. The ruling guarantees that more children convicted of crimes will get a second chance in society, just as I did—but the potential for rehabilitation and change doesn’t end with release from prison. That’s why I am launching the Incarcerated Children’s Advocacy Network (ICAN), a network of formerly incarcerated youths that demonstrates the capacity for change that resides in every child.

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Between hope and despair, waiting for meaningful implementation of Miller v. Alabama

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By Marsha Levick, Jody Kent Lavy, and Ashley Nellis
June 24, 2014

Joe Ligon is a 75-year-old inmate who was condemned to die in a prison in Philadelphia over six decades ago for a murder he witnessed, but did not commit. With no disciplinary infractions and serious health issues, including cancer, he is a gentle man whose continued confinement aptly illustrates the insanity of these extreme sentencing practices.

Two years ago, we thought Joe and the thousands of others like him might have some hope. On June 25, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama that it is unconstitutional to impose a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole upon a juvenile (JLWOP). The ruling immediately voided sentencing laws in 28 states, where approximately 2,100 individuals were serving a mandatory life without parole sentence for murder committed before they turned 18. Another 400+ youth are serving discretionary life sentences across the country. While the opinion did not impose a complete ban on life without parole for young offenders, Justice Kagan was blunt in her critique, writing that future imposition of JLWOP should be rare and uncommon. Justice Kagan further articulated a specific list of factors for consideration by any sentencer, including youthfulness, before condemning a child to die in prison.

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Pope’s words give inmates hope, say advocates for fair sentencing

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By Sarah Hinds, Catholic News Service
June 18, 2014

More than 2,000 people across the United States are currently serving life sentences without parole for crimes they committed as children.

“We are looked down on by society, an embarrassment to be swept under the rug and forgotten,” wrote one inmate.

Pope Francis recently sent a message of hope to a group of these prisoners.

In early May, the pope responded to hundreds of letters from inmates incarcerated for life as juveniles, assuring them of his prayers and that the Lord “knows and loves each one of them.”

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Lorenzo Montoya, convicted of murder at age 15, released after legal challenge

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By Phil Tenser, Marc Stewart
June 16, 2014

After 13 years, a man previously convicted of murder as a teenager had his charge changed and was released from prison Monday.

Lorenzo Montoya was originally convicted of the first-degree murder of teacher Emily Johnson in 2000, when he was 15-years-old. Lynn Kimbrough, spokeswoman for the Denver District Attorney’s Office, said Montoya returned to court for a motion that he had ineffective council at the time of his trial.

Montoya, now 29, is now represented by lawyers from the Center for Juvenile Justice, a non-profit organization. According to that group, their argument also presented new DNA evidence that showed Montoya did not commit the murder.

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'Zero tolerance' policies need to be tamed

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The New York Times Editorial Board
June 13, 2014

 

The “zero tolerance” disciplinary policies that swept through the country’s schools beginning in the 1990s have led to millions of children each year being suspended, expelled and even arrested, mainly for minor misbehavior that would once have been dealt with at the principal’s office. Federal civil rights officials warned this year that these tactics are often used in a discriminatory fashion against black and Latino children, who are at greater risk of being thrown out of school and denied an education.

 

The good news is that these policies are being rolled back. A new report by the Council of State Governments Justice Center, a nonprofit policy group, shows that states and school districts can cut down on suspensions and unwarranted arrests at school within relatively short periods without sacrificing safety or disrupting the school environment.

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What a weekend in prison taught me

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By David Grosso
June 13, 2014

I spent a recent weekend in prison.

As a guest of a program that looks to address the violent daily reality of prison, I had the opportunity — over 20 hours at the maximum-security Patuxent Institution at Jessup, Md. — to reflect on such important issues as human rights, prison culture and conflict resolution.

Some two-thirds of the more than 2 million Americans behind bars are nonviolent offenders, most convicted of drug charges. But in an overcrowded prison system, where many people are serving mandatory minimum sentences, nonviolent prisoners are turning into violent ones.

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Juvenile Hall Mass: Reiterating the pope’s call for LWOP review

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By Doris Benavides
June 12, 2014

Chances are that when at the time this article is being read, a child in the underserved areas of Los Angeles (or in any part of the world) is being victimized by some form of abuse, usually by an adult close to him or her, or is being neglected by his or her parents or guardians.

A large percentage of children who have gone through such trauma, if untreated, will be negatively affected. Many may end up in juvenile halls and, in the United States, condemned to die in prison.

Children like this were represented at a June 8 morning Mass at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar. Attired in gray T-shirts and blue slacks, the incarcerated youth listened attentively as restorative justice advocates explained the work being done to make the criminal justice system rehabilitative and restorative, instead of punitive.

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No child is a superpredator

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By Xavier McElrath-Bey
June 5, 2014

I am a superpredator.

At least that is how criminologists would have described me when I was a teenager.

I was sentenced for my role in a first-degree murder when I was 13, just before the superpredator theory came into being.

A handful of criminologists, using apocalyptic language, claimed that kids would be responsible for a dramatic increase in violent crime during the 1990s. Such kids would be impulsive and remorseless. Black and Latino youth would be the center of that explosion in violence, according to the theory.

These predictions and the ensuing media hype fueled fear of young people of color and, with it, “tough on crime” policies that made it easier to try children as adults and sentence them to long prison terms, including life without parole.

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Prison program turns inmates into intellectuals

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By Ginia Bellafante
New York Times
May 30, 2014

Otisville Correctional Facility is a medium-security state prison, 79 miles northwest of Manhattan, on the site of a former tuberculosis sanitarium — with an equalizing element of portent, near the town of Mount Hope. Many of its prisoners are serving life sentences; they are men whom time, as one guard put it “has mellowed out.” Nearby, but unrelated, is the Otisville federal prison, named by Forbes Magazine as one of America’s “cushiest” incarcerators. Observers have likened it to a college, which is not an analogy you would easily draw at the state prison, where inmates rely largely on encyclopedias for the retrieval of information, in volumes that look as if they were last current when the nation was debating the merits of Dan Quayle.

Still, an intellectual firmament has taken hold. On a recent afternoon, 10 men gathered under the tutelage of Baz Dreisinger, a professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, to share some of their writing and to talk about the Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.”

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