U.S. Shouldn't Jail Youth For Life

brett — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:36:09 -0600

By: Reginald Dwayne Betts

Monday the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases concerning juvenile incarceration. The ruling could determine if it should be unconstitutional to sentence juveniles to life without parole for non-homicide offenses on the grounds of cruel and unusual punishment. The United States is the only country in the world that sentences juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

My story is part of an amicus brief asking justices to reverse the harsh sentences, and give young offenders an opportunity to become productive citizens. I was a juvenile offender who spent more than nine years in adult prison, and my offense could have put me in there for life. Since I've gotten out of prison, I delivered my college commencement address at the University of Maryland, I published my memoir A Question Of Freedom, and I entered grad school. I'm making the most of my freedom, but I know others who will never have the same shot at redemption.

I met guy even younger than me waiting for the bus to go to prison. I'll call him Rashid. His voice still carried the cracks and high notes of adolescence, and his smooth face had never seen a razor. We were headed to Southampton Correctional Center in Virginia.

No fewer than a dozen of us were teenagers, all with peers at home waiting on driver's licenses, graduations and proms - while we waited for a prison cell. Rashid's time was legendary: three life sentences with no chance for parole. It meant he awoke each morning knowing he would one day flatline in a cell.

I looked at him, and I remembered the judge looking down at me, asking if I understood my charges could carry a life sentence. Rashid wasn't old enough to drive, vote, or serve on a jury of his peers - but he was old enough to walk out of a courtroom with a sentence that ends in a casket. After I met Rashid, my nine-year sentence for carjacking seemed like a gift.

Everything I did while incarcerated meant something to me because I could envision a day when I'd be free, and that vision pushed me. There were others who guided me: Jose who helped me teach myself Spanish, Mike G who pushed me to study law. They, too, could see a life not defined by bars and cuffs - but for too many people the violence of prison stifled dreams. Over six months I watched Rashid experience things that would leave anyone lost in depression: theft, beatings, the cloud of rape. A life sentence makes that permanent.

There is an absolute loss of hope for juveniles sentenced to life in prison. A life sentence without parole makes it far too easy to become a part of the violent world of prison, as predator or prey.

I can't imagine what I would have done had the judge sentenced me to life. I can't imagine walking around daily knowing a grave was my only way out. Because I had a release date, I recognized that the time was a way for me to improve myself. Seventeen hours each day to read, study and exercise - to think and become a man far different than the sixteen-old boy who plead guilty to carjacking.

As teenagers, our lives are impulse and reaction. I'm not the same person I was at 16. No one is. The difference between a person at 16 years old and 25 or 30 years old is huge. Juvenile offenders, who are years away from the maturity and sensibility of a 25 or 30 year old, need to know that society believes there is a possibility that they can be more than their crimes. They need to know that society believes rehabilitation is real.

All any incarcerated juvenile wants to believe is that their life can be more than a series of cell doors.

Previously:

From High School To High Security

brett — Thu, 21 May 2009 13:48:21 -0500

Reginald Dwayne Betts went from the high school honor roll to the penitentiary. He spent 9 years in adult prison beginning at age 16, for car jacking in Virginia. Tonight he'll be the first person in his family to graduate from college, and more than that, he'll deliver the student commencement address at the University of Maryland. Betts beat the odds in a big way. Recidivism rates are already high within the juvenile justice system, and they're 34% higher for youth tried as adults. The Senate is currently considering the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA), a bill that would make it harder to place youth in adult jails. Reginald Dwayne Betts looks back on everything he’s endured to get where he is today.

By: Reginald Dwayne Betts

When I was 16 years old, I was certified as an adult and sentenced to nine years in prison. I was certified because I had a robbery charge and in the state of Virginia if you have a robbery, murder or rape, you can automatically be certified as an adult and so I was rubberstamped and sent into the system.

When they sent me from the juvenile detention center to the Fairfax County jail, at the time they had a sight and sound policy and that meant that juveniles couldn’t be within the sight or the sound of adults. Because they didn’t have the proper facilities to hold me in the jail, they put me in solitary confinement. I didn’t have a mattress, I didn’t have a blanket, I didn’t have a pillow and I only had the clothes that I wore on my back for seven days.

You know, that sort of prepared me to understand that jail was not designed to be in my best interest and there wasn’t anybody that I could complain to.

The reality is that in prison people care about your ability to protect yourself or to do whatever you need to do to survive. If you’re younger, you aren’t prepared physically or emotionally to deal with prison. It took me seven years in prison before I talked to a mental health worker. And, um, I had spent time in two super maximum security prisons, I had spent over a year in isolation, not once was I asked, you know, how was my mental health.

For my first, you know, four to six years, no matter where I went, I would be the youngest person in the block that I was in. If I marked an adolescent shift, it was when somebody younger than me asked me for some advice, that’s when I realized that, you know, I’m basically growing up in a jail cell.

Like, I have all of these memories in my head that have replaced the adolescent markers. Like, I was in a cell below someone that beat a man to death. And I remember the guards carrying the dead prisoner on a gurney like the nurses pushing him down the walkway, banging on his chest, trying to revive him.

The thing is, what are you gonna do with all the memories that you have once you leave prison? And, I mean, that’s the question posed to all the young people who get sent to prison. Because it’s like, you will accumulate these memories and a lot of them won’t be good, and the thing becomes, what will you do with all those memories once you get home?

Additional Resources:

The Campaign for Youth Justice (CFYJ) is dedicated to ending the practice of trying, sentencing, and incarcerating youth under 18 in the adult criminal justice system.

Reginald Dwayne Betts' memoir will be published in August by Penguine Books.

Act 4 Juvenile Justice is a coalition of youth advocacy groups organized around Congressional reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA).

Youth Radio - Topic: youth imprisonment

U.S. Shouldn't Jail Youth For Life

From High School To High Security