My Sociological Life

Before reading true notebooks, I have to admit that I had a very callous view of juvenile inmates being tried in adult court. I thought, “Hey, they committed a serious crime, of course they should be punished just as severely as adults. Period.” I had never really thought about the issue in any other way. It was plain as day to me; I did not feel sympathy for the juvenile inmates at all but only that a sense that justice was being done. In fact, I did not see the juvenile inmates as thinking feeling individuals, capable of remorse and regret. They were just a mass of people labeled “criminals”; a uniform blob of “someone else(s)”. After reading True Notebooks however, specifically the inmates’ essays and following them through the thick and thin of one year of their lives, I feel ashamed of my initial cold and critical judgments. I found that I did not even know them, and had no right to criticize them. Like Salzman, I found my opinions of the inmates changing drastically as I got to know them. According to the law, juveniles who have committed serious crimes like murder must be tried in adult court. During the process, many juveniles ended up being given long sentences to be spent in adult prison. I am not quite sure now, of whether the current procedures of trying juveniles in adult court is appropriate or whether it should be done at all.

The more I read about the inmates, the less I see them as “someone else”. They become as real to me as my next door neighbor. They are somebody; someone’s son, daughter, father, friend, brother. When I thought of them as “someone else” , I did not have an interest in their well being and thus it was easy for me to dismiss their plight and consider them conveniently “finished” and undeserving of costly rehabilitation. Now however, once I have learned more about who they are, I am all for their rehabilitation. To simply cast them away into adult court is akin to dismissing them forever as “BAD” and ignoring the rest of who they are just because of a crime committed during youth. When you hear pleas for help like Duc Bui’s, “…I lonely. I need help.” (224) or hear Francisco’s confession, “I might seem like if I’m big and tough, as if I’m hard as a stone on the outside, but deep inside of me, I am a person with fear, anger and hurt.” (65) you have got to be dead for your heart to be unmoved. Many times we just focus on the exterior and forget about their “soft” interiors. We see them and instantly think “CRIMINAL”, but we do not bother to make the effort to dig deeper down and see who they really are.

A few of the inmates, like Duc Bui and Kevin Jackson, touched me with their remorse and desire to turn over a new leaf. When I read lamentations like Kevin’s “I wish the things that I done didn’t occur…I wish I could take them back….” (309) , Duc’s “I feel regret but it’s too late.” (289) or Jose’s “Now I pray for the people I hurt.” (271), my resolve that they all deserve to be in prison for as long as possible crumbled. I could feel their sincerity; they really do seem to realize their mistakes. I feel that as long as someone has regret for what he has done and is willing to change, he will respond well to rehabilitation. The inmates are still so young, and if rehabilitated properly, they have so much that they can contribute to society. How then can we just throw them into the bowels of adult prison, and flush them down while we are at it?

Another thing that I realized was that I had judged them through MY view of this world; and this is unfair to them. My circumstances in life have little in common with theirs. Reading about their lives made me feel guilty for as Victor puts it “They don’t know what it’s like when you come from a family that didn’t have a father to guide you…when there is nothing to eat when you come home from school… when you need to quit school to get a job….They don’t know because they come from rich families…”(290). I am part of “They”, and Victor is right; I know nothing. The inmates come from circumstances that are very different from yours and mine, and their propensity towards crime, though unquestionably wrong, could not be dismissed so easily as due to their being “bad people”. It is not that simple, and until we can step into their shoes and see the world as they do, I do not think that we could ever gain full insight into why they commit crimes, and thus we could never be fully justified to punish them for their crimes of which we understand nothing. This said, we should not be so harsh and final in deciding that all juveniles who have committed crimes like murder should be tried in adult courts; everything should be handled as a case-by-case basis.

I am not saying that all the juvenile inmates are misunderstood angels however, I agree that some inmates like Nathaniel Hall seem to be unrepentant and even anticipating their sentencing to adult prison as “graduate school on full scholarship” (141). Since these people, like Nathaniel Hall who had proudly declared that “…The day I get released, I’ll go right back to bangin’…”(146), would probably not be receptive to rehabilitation and could pose a danger to society once released, I feel that it might not be altogether unfair to try some juveniles as adults. As such, it is tough to discern which inmate “deserves” to be rehabilitated and which “deserves” to be sent to adult prison. There simply is no secret infallible formula to decide whether someone is genuinely regretful and would respond well to rehabilitation. I sympathize with the law makers who are right now struggling to draw the line between being merciful to the inmates and exposing society to dangerous criminals.

One other reason why I am doubtful about sending juvenile inmates to adult prison is because I feel that a stint at an adult prison will actually encourage them to continue in the life of crime. People, especially young adults, learn by observing and internalizing the behavior and values of those around them. So, if we place a juvenile, still malleable to the hands of peers and society, in the midst of hard-core adult criminals, it does not take Einstein to figure out just what values he will internalize. In adult prison, the juvenile will receive positive reinforcement for engaging in criminal behavior in the form of much-sought-after safety from others and only hardship and abuse if he chooses to eschew it. Even the most honorable and straight-walking of men may eventually surrender to the pressure of violent prison life. As Francisco puts it, “Negative leads to more negative, and positive leads to more positive. That’s how I changed.” (94); put a “criminal” among his peers and he will never learn to live otherwise. Therefore, in order to set a wayward juvenile straight, one should keep him far away from his violent peers and surround him with those who practically sweats values that you want him to adopt from their very pores.

The bottom line is this: do not cast all juveniles into one mould and declare them all “unsalvageable”. Each child is different and some do have the potential to be rehabilitated. I agree that some juveniles “deserves” to be tried as an adult but some do not, as thus they should all be treated on a case-by-case basis. There is no valid justification for trying juveniles in adult court simply on the basis of the severity of crime. Such sweeping generalization undermines the value of a young person’s life. Every single case that comes before the judge should be treated with utmost solemnity and decisions to try a juvenile as an adult should be done on a case by case basis because the outcome will make or break a young person’s life and future. To all who casually flings a juvenile into adult court like used toilet paper, one day you may do so to a person who is genuinely willing to change, and he will turn and say to you, “Thank you for destroying my future…” (Jimmy Wu, 208). And that, is not justice.