a public defender

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Meet Jacob Ind. Jacob is one of 46 teens sentenced to life without parole in Colorado, pursuant to a statute that has since been repealed. The facts surrounding his conviction are pretty gruesome. He hired a fellow student to kill his mother and step-father, both of whom levied years of abuse on Jacob - emotional from the mother and sexual from the step-father. But you can do your own research on that if you’re interested.

At the age of 15, Jacob was sentenced to LWOP. He was featured in a PBS documentary and now Lisa at Compassion in Juvenile Sentencing has been corresponding with Jacob. The result is an 8-part series of posts, which feature his responses on topics ranging from how to survive inside prison, whether supermax is really for the “worst of the worst”, how the prison system isn’t designed to help teens along the right path, what he dreads most each day, what he dreams about doing if he gets out and, ofcourse, his coming to terms with his actions.

An absolute must read for those who are interested in prison culture and the impact that lengthy periods of incarceration have on teens. Jacob seems to have come around and developed into an intelligent, articulate individual, but think of the many that are not. Here’s a sampling, but for the full series (and you really should read all the posts), go to Lisa’s blog:

What is hard on the young minority kids coming into prison is that they’re expected to remain loyal to their gang and some of the older gang members are not above exploiting the youthful urge to be accepted and to fit in. Black youth seem to be better off than Mexican kids because the Nation of Islam has enough of a following in here that if a Black kid chooses to drop his gang for The Nation, he’ll mostly be left alone. The Mexican kids don’t have a group like that, so if they leave their gangs they do so without any support. Prison is a scary place and with all the other pressures on a kid, he is not likely to abandon his support group.

That’s the boat Andrew Medina was in. If it wasn’t for the new mental health program which sidestepped the draconian members of the review board, he’d still be there. [Andrew Medina was shown on the Frontline Special, “When Kids Get Life” in May of 2007. At that time he had been in Supermax for over five years. He has subsequently been moved to General Population in the Centennial facility in Colorado]. That guy took his classes and stayed out of trouble, but it didn’t matter. He was young, looks very young, and has life so he wasn’t fit to be released. DOC locks away its perceived problems instead of dealing with them. It is far easier to send kids to Supermax instead of creating programs suited for their adjustment to prison… Juvenile systems country-wide manage to deal with it without resorting to Supermax prisons, but then again, juvenile systems are designed to deal with kids, adult prison isn’t.

…

A big part of that was taking responsibility for my actions. I had felt no responsibility for killing my parents and hurting so many people as a result. It was their fault I killed them, they shouldn’t have treated me like they did. I ended up trying to convince myself that I was acting in vengeance against two absolutely evil creatures with no human worth – I glorified myself and dehumanized them. Becoming a man I could be proud of required that I be honest with myself. I acted out of weakness and fear and my parents, despite their actions, were just very hurt people trying to deal with their own demons. My actions weren’t noble and pure, they were ignorant, hurtful and wrong. Putting myself in the shoes of those I’ve hurt gave me a whole new perspective.