I’ve posted a number of Jacob Ind’s essays on serving life without the possibility of parole. KKTV Channel 11 in Colorado Springs aired a story yesterday on the Jacob Ind case and asked their viewers the question, should juveniles who commit murders before the age of 18 be sentenced to life without parole.

It’s interesting to note that the judge in Jacob Ind’s case felt the sentence was too harsh and although the Colorado Attorney General felt that Jacob Ind and Gabriel Adams’ cases should have been tried in adult court, he would not have been opposed to sentencing them to prison terms that afforded the possibility of parole.

Colorado stopped sentencing juveniles to LWOP in 2006, but the change was not made retroactive for the 46 juveniles sentenced to LWOP in Colorado prior to the change.

The news broadcast can be seen here.

“When it was established last year, Colorado’s Juvenile Clemency Board was held out as a last ray of hope for young prisoners serving time for crimes they committed in their teens.

But 24 young prisoners serving life without parole - and many more serving lesser sentences - are ineligible to petition the board to reduce their sentences.

A misunderstood eligibility rule appears to be the problem.

It recently came to light when Christopher Selectman, 30, who is serving a life sentence for gunning down a man during a drug deal when he was 16, asked for an application and was told he wasn’t entitled to one.

That’s because he was 18 - an adult - by the time he was sentenced, according to his prison case manager.

In his executive order establishing the juvenile clemency board last fall, Gov. Bill Ritter said it was designed for juvenile offenders who had been tried as adults.”

Read the rest from the Rocky Mountain News here.

It’s an interesting observation that one of the things we’re most proud of in this country, our democratic form of government, may be part of the reason we have come to be so draconian in our sentencing practices. The trend since the 1970’s to get tough on crime may well be influenced more than it ought to be by the fact that our lawmakers are elected officials who tend to act in accordance with the demands of their constituents.

Our reputation as a country to emulate continues to suffer. This article in the New York Times provides more insight.

It used to be that Europeans came to the United States to study its prison systems. They came away impressed.

“In no country is criminal justice administered with more mildness than in the United States,” Alexis de Tocqueville, who toured American penitentiaries in 1831, wrote in “Democracy in America.”

No more.

“Far from serving as a model for the world, contemporary America is viewed with horror,” James Q. Whitman, a specialist in comparative law at Yale, wrote last year in Social Research. “Certainly there are no European governments sending delegations to learn from us about how to manage prisons.”

Prison sentences here have become “vastly harsher than in any other country to which the United States would ordinarily be compared,” Michael H. Tonry, a leading authority on crime policy, wrote in “The Handbook of Crime and Punishment.”

Indeed, said Vivien Stern, a research fellow at the prison studies center in London, the American incarceration rate has made the United States “a rogue state, a country that has made a decision not to follow what is a normal Western approach.”

Why do you think we now lead the world in incarceration, and what do you think should be done about it?

Like many people, I was intrigued by the photos of Cheryl Armstrong with the dogs in prison. I have never visited a prison in Colorado, and I didn’t know anything about the dog training program that was established a number of years ago. I asked Cheryl about it and this is what she wrote to me:

“For almost two years of my incarceration I was on the dog program. The program actually got its start with 5 dogs at my facility over 6 years ago. It quickly expanded to 15 people here and is now in numerous facilities in Colorado. The [inmates'] beds are raised up so a kennel can fit under them. There are two types of dogs that come through the program — rescued dogs who are homeless and adopted out (after being trained), and dogs whose families have paid for them to be trained. Each inmate has one dog in her cell and her job is to train it. A dog is here 4-6 weeks, usually. Keep reading →

Several weeks ago, I spoke with Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins of Illinois.victims.org after she commented on a post I’d done that she felt had portrayed murder victims’ families as vengeful.

That hadn’t been my intent, but after speaking with Jennifer, I realized that my reference to victims’ families in the post had been insensitive.

My stated purpose for the creation of this blog is to create a dialogue, but doing so has proven easier said than done.

I realized that with very few exceptions, there was no conduit for meaningful dialogue between the advocates for eliminating the sentence of Juvenile Life without the Possibility of Parole and the living victims of those inmates serving LWOP for crimes committed as juveniles. Keep reading →

5280.com posted a nice piece on Colorado’s move toward restorative justice alternatives for juveniles yesterday:

“Gov. Bill Ritter took a step forward today in the movement to become smart about crime, rather than just tough on crime. He signed into law a bill that grants judges the option of ordering juvenile offenders to meet with their victims and perform community service, rather than be incarcerated in detention facilities”

Read the rest here and more here.

I asked Cheryl Armstrong (her story is here) what kind of life she imagined for herself, if she were to be released from prison. This is what she said:

The kind of life outside I picture myself living & things I’ve grown to know…

When I get out of prison, I picture myself living a simple but productive life. I want to end up building a career for myself that corresponds with my life experience and educational background. I would like to help teach others by Keep reading →

Cheryl Armstrong is currently serving a 96 year sentence in the Colorado Womens Prison. Her story is here. I asked Cheryl Armstrong,  if she was inspired by anyone. This is what she told me:

I always say that very few people have truly inspired me in my life, but as I evolve spiritually, I’m finding that even the people I don’t care much for who don’t care much for me can be inspiring. This is because I’ve changed how I Keep reading →

Cheryl Armstrong is serving a 96-year sentence in Canon City, Colorado for two counts of second degree murder. She did not kill anyone, but drove the getaway car and was accused of being the “mastermind” in a double homicide in 1995 when she was 16 years old. Cheryl is now 29.

I’ve written to Cheryl and she agreed to allow me to post her responses to questions I’ve asked about her life in prison. The following was what she told me when I asked if she found things to be grateful for.

The first thing I did when I opened my eyes this morning was simply to tell God “Thank You.” I have begun to make this a normal practice throughout my days also. It really is amazing how much it was so easy to see the negative in Keep reading →