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Lolita Barthel's Sentence Of Life In Prisons

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There are more than 2,000 child offenders serving life without parole sentences in United States prisons for crimes committed before the age of 18 and Lolita Barthel is one of them. The United States is one of only a few countries in the world that permits children who commit crimes to be sentenced to prison forever, without any possibility of release. Only eight states in this country Alaska, Colorado, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, New Mexico, New York, and West Virginia and the District of Columbia prohibit life without parole for youthful offenders. Unfortunately, adolescents, like adults, commit horrible crimes and make terrible mistakes. And, like adults, they should be held accountable but in accordance with their age, stage of development, and greater capacity for rehabilitation. …show more content…

An estimated 26 percent of juveniles sentenced to prison for life were convicted of a felony murder, that is, for participating in a robbery or burglary during which a co-participant committed murder, in some cases without the knowledge of the teen. Fifty-nine percent of youth sentenced to Life without parole sentences are serving time for a first-time offense. In 26 states, the sentence of life without parole is mandatory for anyone, even a juvenile, who is found guilty of committing first degree murder. Lolita Barthel she was seventeen at the time when she robs Richard Menendez on August 18th, 1995. She was arrested on September 14th, 1995 just seven days after her birthday, she was a few weeks from turning 18 when she shot and killed the Temple Terrace floral supply salesman in August 1995, during a robbery as the victim begged for his life. Females are increasingly becoming more active in the juvenile justice system and this is said to be happening at alarming

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Could you imagine your 17 year old daughter, who is at her first year in college, being sentenced to life in prison without parole? Yvette Louisell didn’t know that that’s where her life was headed but soon she would find out. She is one out of 37 current Iowa inmates that have been given a life sentence for a crime committed as a juvenile. Louisell lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan but was eagerly hoping to find a way out. Her family life was not very stable.

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Not only does Berstein call for an overall reform of this nation’s juvenile prisons, she goes as far as saying the practice of locking up youth is in need of a “more profound than incremental and partial reform” (13). The fact that Bernstein outlines the numerous failed strategies and goals of this practice with her compelling use of studies and statistics is enough to promote an audience to reject the practice of locking up youth. The statistic she shares that “four out of five juvenile parolees [will be] back behind bars within three years of release” as well as the studies she conducted on numerous instances when a guards abuse of power lead to the death of a child work to further prove her point: being that “institution[s] as intrinsically destructive as the juvenile prison” have no place in a modern society (13, 83). Bernstein refutes this false sense effectiveness further by sharing her own ideas on what she believes works as a much more humane solution to rehabilitating

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While the crime committed may be atrocious, adolescents should not be sentenced to life in prison without parole; therefore, they should be given a chance to correct themselves through parole. The

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In the book Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, who is an attorney, guides us through his life in Alabama and how he helps defend innocent, poor people and children on death row who were wrongly convicted. Nearly 44,000 youth are incarcerated in juvenile justice facilities. Currently an estimated 250,000 youth are tried, sentenced, or incarcerated as adults every year across the United States. While some may argue that young adult offenders should be tried and punished as adults to ensure that their actions do not reoccur, the United States Justice Systems should implement rehabilitation and less harsh punishments for younger offenders to fully develop and mature.

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Life Sentence: Nathan Ybanez On the night of June 5,1996 in Highlands, Colorado, 15-year-old Nathan Ybanez and his friend, Erik Jensen, bludgeoned and strangled 43-year-old Julie Ybanez after being told that he was being shipped off to a Missouri Military school. The next day a police officer found Nathan in a deserted park with his mother’s corpse. Both Ybanez and Jensen were both charged with first degree murder and sentence to life without parole in the year 2000. Currently Nathan is 35 years old, the latest heard of him was in July 2013, he is still in the process of repealing his case, but he continues to voice out his opinion using the outlet known as YouTube.

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Alabama, as a result of Miller’s appeal the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to impose a life without parole sentence on children under age 18. The documentary Second Chance Kids and the article They Were Sentenced as Superpredators covers the aftermath of the 2012 Supreme Court ruling that followed “lifers” who were imprisoned as minors and not offered a chance for parole. One of these lifers, Joe Donavan, was one of the first to be released on parole after the court’s ruling. One notable thing to remember is that none of the prisoners released after committing crimes as children have broken their parole or perpetrated another crime. This supports the court’s decision to release prisoners who committed crimes as minors as it proves the “superpredator” theory wrong by showing that these teens are capable of improvement and change.

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Since children are subject to many stages of harm in adult prisons, they are also prone to recidivism, “Those that survive become more dangerous and reoffend at more serious levels very soon after release from prison” (367). Kids who survive prison are often left with psychological damage and resort in behavioral problems which leads them back in prison with no hope of a proper rehabilitation. They say prison is a dangerous cycle. When you are out, you never stay out and the cycle continues because the world does not want you

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Juvenile Life Without Parole: An Overview. " The Sentencing Project, 2019, www.sentencingproject.org/publications/juvenile-life-without-parole/. This source provides an overview of the issue of juvenile life without parole and the policy changes that have been made regarding it. The Sentencing Project is a non-profit organization that works to reform the criminal justice system, with a particular focus on reducing mass incarceration " Changing the Criminal Justice System on Behalf of Children." PBS NewsHour, Public Broadcasting Service, 15 Dec. 2020, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/classroom/2020/12/bryan-stevenson-on-changing-the-criminal-justice-system-on-behalf-of-children/#:~:text=Stevenson%20helped%20to%20push%20a,or%20life%20imprisonment%20without%20parole."

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Ethos is a rhetorical device authors use to establish their credibility to speak authoritatively on a topic. To strengthen their arguments, they also use logos, or logical arguments and scientific data, and pathos to create an emotional reaction in the audience. In the ERWC Juvenile Justice unit, four different authors, with four different levels of ethos, discuss whether or not juveniles who have been charged with murder should be tried as adults in the adult court system. Most argue that minors should be tried in the juvenile court system, while one demands that adolescents who massacre innocent victims spend the rest of their lives in prison. After closely reading each author’s opinion, it is clear that Paul Thompson has the most ethos

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Juveniles should be tried as adults with life without parole but only in certain cases: depending on their motive or modus operandi, their crime, and criminal background. Motivation Scandalous kids who commit crimes for unreasonable motives should most definitely have life without the possibility of parole. In some cases, they’re just doing what they think is best. Jacob Ind, a 15 year old from Colorado, was beaten and sexually molested by his step father. His mother abused him as well.

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Cristian Fernandez, who was twelve years old at the time of the crime, committed manslaughter and aggravated battery to his half-brother who was only two years of age (Schoettler, 2013). An adult would receive a thirty-year minimum sentence for this crime, but Fernandez received a seven-year sentence and will be released on his nineteenth birthday. Juveniles are treated differently in the criminal justice system regardless of the crime they commit which is not how it should be. It is clear that juveniles are given a slap on the wrist even though they commit heinous crimes and that needs to change. Juveniles should be processed as adults because age is no excuse for criminal behavior, punishment should be based on the crime committed, and their population is committing more crimes than ever before.

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a. States are being urged to increase the age required to be tried as an adult, more laws could be made to assist in decreasing youth indictment rates. b. But I do believe that the most important form of action would be to fully separate the juvenile and adult correctional facilities entirely. Conclusion I. In summary, children being tried as adults is becoming a growing problem in modern day America, it’s successfully corrupting our children into believing that the place they belong is the same place where 48 percent of them are sexually assaulted within the first forty-eight

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We have seen today in society of how crime rates have been rampant and how statistics show that most of the crimes were being made by minors. I believe that when most of them look at the bottom of these young offenders come disproportionately from impoverished single-parent homes that are located in the neighbourhoods desinvertido and have high rates of learning disabilities, mental health, and substance abuse and problems with the help of the system of juvenile justice that can make a great return on a successful transition to adulthood. Their ages ranged from 20 and under, most are under fifteen years of age. Juveniles tried as adults must assume the same consequences as any other criminal and are subject to state prisons with inmates much higher and that have probably committed crimes much more tortuous then you could ever have. These minors between the ages of nine to twenty according to the offence committed or of the number of times that are prosecuted and believe that it is immutable.

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Placing children and teenagers in jail results in negative effects rather than rehabilitation. The juvenile justice system in America is complex and varies from state to state, but the overarching purpose is to rehabilitate youth offenders. It processes nearly 1.7 million cases a year and overall handles most of them the same way (“Youth Involved in the Juvenile Justice System”). When those under age go to trial, their sentence often is decided by how likely they are to be rehabilitated and learn from their mistakes (“Juvenile justice”).

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Annotated bibliography Childress, S. (2016, June 2). More States Consider Raising the Age for Juvenile Crime. Retrieved from PBS: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/more-states-consider-raising-the-age-for-juvenile-crime/ More states are considering to raising the age for juvenile crimes before being tried as adult because young offender's mental capacity. The idea is to cut the cost of incarcerate young offender in adult prison and ensure offenders to receive proper education and specialized care to change their behavior. Putting children in adult prison does not deter crime.

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