Lock Them Up And Throw Away The Key Essay

Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key

Other than the death penalty, life without parole is the cruelest sentence that a person can receive in the United States. The way people viewed childhood in the United States by the end of the nineteenth century changed drastically. Julia Lathrop, Jane Adams, and Sophonsiba Breckinridge were reformers that helped emphasize that children were innocent, malleable, and vulnerable. They described children’s deviant behavior as just a part of their developmental process and they could easily be rehabilitated. Because of their activism, juvenile courts were set up across the country. Children’s cases were taken away from adult courts. The idea of children being able to be rehabilitated unfortunately change in

the early seventies, when the public started crying out for “get tough” policies and this idea of rehabilitation for children was replaced with a spirit of vengeance. This was shown through the highly public case of Willie Bosket.
In 1978, Willie Bosket was fifteen years old when he was convicted of killing two people by shooting them in a New York subway. His sentence was the maximum for the crime under New York juvenile law and spent five years in a youth facility. Many people thought this sentence wasn’t severe enough for his horrific crime so New York decided to institute harsher consequences for children and passed laws allowing children to be tried as adults separate from the juvenile system and in the adult criminal courts once again. Around the country, states started adapting this phenomenon. “Before 1980, life without parole sentences were rarely imposed on children, but by 1989 the number of child offenders who received life without parole sentences had increased markedly” (Amnesty & HRW 29-31). In the mid-nineties, the children sentenced to life without parole numbers skyrocketed because of the widely spread phenomenon of trying children as adults. More and more laws were put into place to put more children to adult criminal courts. A few states even lowered the age of the adult system to seventeen instead of eighteen so more children were automatically placed into the adult criminal courts.
In 1989, Joe Sullivan became the youngest person in the United States to be sentenced to life without parole. He was a thirteen year-old mentally disabled African American boy who was accused of raping an older woman in Florida. The whole back-story of his case was that he was with two older teens, fifteen year-old Michael Gulley and seventeen year-old Nathan McCants. Michael Gulley and Nathan McCants convinced Joe Sullivan to break into a home with them where Nathan McCants stole some jewelry, and then they all left the house. Later that day, someone returned to the house and raped an elderly woman. The police questioned the boys and Nathan McCants and Michael Gulley blamed the rape on Joe Sullivan. The trial only lasted eight hours where the victim testified that she never saw her attackers face but stated he was, “a colored boy” with “kinky hair… he was quite black, and he was small” (Segura 43). The prosecutors relied on the words of the two older boys that were with Joe Sullivan to convict him. The jury only took thirty-five minutes to convict Joe Sullivan. Even though they did not have any biological or physical evidence linking him to the crime, he was sentenced to life with even the possibility of parole. The other two boys, Michael Gulley and Nathan McCants were tried as juveniles and sentenced to short sentences in a juvenile detention center. While Joe Sullivan, continues to serve his sentence in an adult facility and has been confined to a wheelchair because of his multiple sclerosis.
Another important case was, Terrance Graham. Only one month before his eighteenth birthday, he was sent to prison for the rest of his natural life without parole. Terrance Graham was born with two crack-addicted parents. His mother stopped once he was born but his father never did. He was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in elementary school. He suffered from depression in his teens because of his unstable life at home and he wanted to move away from home so he could escape his family. At the age of sixteen, he served a year in a pre-trial detention center for attempting to rob a barbeque restaurant. He entered through the back at closing time but fled when the manager started yelling at him, and left with no money. Terrance Graham was then placed on parole for three years. In 2004, he was walking down the street with two twenty-one year-old co-defendants and were arrested for suspicion of home invasion. Due to Terrance Graham’s compliance with his probation up until the home invasion and because he had many teen problems, the Florida Department of Corrections recommended that Terrance Graham received either a forty-eight month prison sentence. The court rejected these recommendations and instead gave Terrance Graham a life without parole sentence. The co-defendants were sentenced to eleven and thirty-five years in prison. Florida’s Department of Corrections found that Grahams sentence was 8.5 times greater that the average sentence for all adult violent offenders. 7.1 time greater than the average sentence for all adult offenders convicted of armed burglary, and 2.2 times greater that the average sentence for all adult offenders convicted of murder (De la Vega & Leighton 58). In conclusion of his trial, Terrance Graham’s sentence was cruel and unusual.
Subsequently, the Supreme Court finally decided that children “should not be deprived of the opportunity to achieve maturity of judgment and self-recognition of human worth and potential… [Florida] has denied him any chance to later demonstrate that he is fit to rejoin society based solely on a non-homicide crime that he committed when he was a child in the eyes of the law” (Agyepong 94). As seen from the social power control perspective the Supreme Court gets to control laws that get the most prosecution so they decided to pass a law stating that it is unconstitutional to give children that are seventeen or under who commit a non-homicide offense a life without parole sentence.
Many people would think this is a great opportunity for Terrance Graham, but that is not the case.

In twelve years, Terrance Graham will be getting out of prison. He will be forty years old if, “he can make it out” (Drinan). Being behind bars as a young inmate in an adult facility for twenty-five years is an every day struggle to survive. Terrance Graham does have access to many educational opportunities and a simple game of chess is risky. He has witnessed another inmate’s rape during his first days of prison, and recently watched another young inmate be killed. He lives among many older inmates that have “nothing to lose” and every day is a quest to survive (Drinan). Even if Terrance Graham could get out one day, he will be labeled as a criminal the rest of his life. As Howard Becker states in his labeling theory, deviance is not in the act itself, but rather in how society responds to it. When he is free, he will have that label hanging over him that will give him career contingencies and make it hard for him to get by. The Supreme Court’s decision to abolish life without parole sentences for children that are seventeen or under who are convicted of non-homicide offenses was an amazing achievement for the United States and a great step forward but looking at the rest of the world this is actually a very small

victory.
International law categorically bans life without parole sentences for children without exception. The Supreme Court ruling to abolish it just for non-homicide offenses is violating this international law. The United States happens to be the only known violator of this law. In 2006, the United Nations decided to vote for the abolition of the life without parole sentence for children all together. The vote was 185 to 1. The United States was the only country that disagreed with abolishing this horrific sentence. “How is it that the country that holds itself out as a beacon of light to the rest of the world, a country that portrays itself as a champion of humans rights, treats its most vulnerable citizens in a way that most of the world frown upon?” (Agyepong 84) According to the conflict theory by Richard Quinney, capitalism creates a crimogenic society one that induces crime based on class conflict. The United States violates international laws and international treaties like, Convention of the Rights of the Child, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and so many more. This is sickening to think about. The children in our country, the only country that continues to give this cruel sentence to it’s children, cannot be more violent than children in other parts of the world.
Another thing that is disturbing involving life without parole sentences for children is racial issues. Media has played a huge role in bringing this issue about. The media used words like wolf packs, wild dogs, predators, feral beast, etc. to describe inner-city children. This coverage encouraged the relationship between race and crime. The “get tough” campaigns that were discussed earlier were mainly targeted at young black males. The two cases discussed earlier of Joe Sullivan and Terrance Graham, were both conveniently young black males. Joe Sullivan’s race was brought up repeatedly at his trial and as noted earlier the jury only took thirty-five minutes to convict him. Every single one of the children sentenced to life without parole for non-homicide offenses are children of color. Of the entire United States population, only twenty-six percent are children of color. Of the children serving life without parole sentences, they make up seventy-one percent (De La Vega & Leighton). This is an extremely disproportionate rate and just goes to show that there is discrimination against colored children in the criminal courts.
Life without parole sentences is an extremely harsh sentence and we give it to our most innocent and vulnerable citizens. Children are learning and still developing past the age of eighteen years old. To have people that are not even doctors or psychiatrists tell these kids that they are worthless and can never rejoin society again is inhumane. The United States went from creating the juvenile court system to protect their children to being the only country that is known for giving children life without parole sentences. Our children deserve better.