A Long Way Gone #2

The second part of this memoir was filled with emotion. Ishmael Beah started the chapter with an unexpected attack on a village that was hosting him while he was on the run towards safety and news of his family. Keep in mind that this boy was much younger than I am now and he was already making the decisions of life and death every day. Beah went on after the attack alone. The poor communication systems in Africa provided nothing for him. This is what the Invisible Children group is doing that, after reading this book, makes me realize is so important. Simple communication systems can reunite families and bring news of danger. A simple telephone tower could have provided Beah with information on how to get to safety and possible news of his family. However, he did not have this luxury. He found himself alone in the forest for days. Survival was difficult but Beah had made friends.

             Once again, I find this situation too similar to the Holocaust. People had no reason to survive other than the people around them. Beah had made friends with other runaway boys and used them as his means of survival. They truly kept each other alive. Without family, the boys were lost without authority. They found ways to keep the mood light.
            This part of the book ended with Beah receiving information that members of his village, Mattru Jong, were in a town that was nearby. He was overcome with joy. I still feel as though the luxury of a communication cables would have made this book nonexistent. People would know of the horrors that were coming and there would be no surprise attacks.
            It makes me feel like I take luxuries for granted. 911 is only three buttons away and it is easy to turn on the news and know of horror. Humans are an interesting race. There are the kinds that do both good and evil and they are the kind that can destroy each other. This is what is happening in Central Africa right now. We are the only people that can stop the suffering or the slaughters will continue. Something that may seem not important to us can be the difference of life and death to Beah.

Juvenile Justice #3

Nathaniel Abraham was the youngest person to be tried in adult court. He was eleven years old when he killed an 18 year old. This makes me question the adult system. I still don't know the requirements for being tried under adult court. I’m assuming that it is based on a judge’s discretion. How does a judge determine this? How can an eleven year old boy get tried in a system that deals with mass murderers who are already fully developed adults? There is no question that his mind is not yet developed. He can clearly be rehabilitated and once again become a fully functioning member of society.

Since the boy has pleaded guilty he has spent some time in jail. Since he has recently been let go, he is back in jail on drug charges at 22. From the looks of the pictures on the internet, jail has not been good for him. I also recently found out that there is a group that is very much for charging juvenile defenders with adult punishments. The group is called Adult Crime Adult Time. They think that if a kid is mature enough to play with guns then they can handle the consequences. I tend to agree. If someone is mature enough to commit an adult crime then they should face consequences. The degree of the consequences, I believe, should vary. The mind needs to mature. I believe that not everybody can be “corrected” with jail. However, young people are an exception. They can learn. They can fix the problems they had when they were young with the right care.

http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/nathaniel_abraham_killer_at_11.html

A Long Way Gone #1

Just to start, the picture on the cover of this book explains everything. From the little I know about the problems with child abduction in Africa, I can tell that the look on the boys face really shows the emotion that this book is going to offer. The first 44 pages of this book really show how normal life could have been. If you consider our distances apart, I see many similarities between myself and Ishmael, the author and narrator of the memoir. He listens to rap music and finds way to pass the time with his friends. However, apart from the similarities we share Ishmael talks about the horrors of the war from day one. He describes his first views of the war in a gruesome, detailed description of a man carrying his son. "The skin that hung down from their bodies still contained fresh blood" (Beah 13). There is no way I can feel for this. Seeing something like that, not in a movie, would almost instantly change your life on the spot. It would make it all real, and this really proves that it is real. This isn't fiction. What Ishmael is describing is the things that he has seen with his own eyes. His first image of the war was so gruesome and bloody. It only got worse. The second chapter was a terrible dream that would never be forgotten if it happened to anyone. he dreamed about being abducted and living through the horrors of war. What's worse is that the dream is not far off from reality. Beah sees child soldiers all the time and he knows that they are not less dangerous than adult soldiers. These child killers are among the most dangerous. He also talked about the methods of recruitment that he saw. He saw people with the rebel initials carved into their skin, a permanent scar. He held strong by staying with the family.

These abductions remind me a lot of the Holocaust. People are taken from their homes and placed in horrible conditions. While the killings may be on a smaller scale, this is still a mass killing of people. These children are living in fear of their life and almost all of them will never reconnect. We said never again to the Holocaust, but what did that mean. These people aren’t of European decent but they deserve the same treatment. We need to do more to stop mass killings around the world. I’m not even sure what the rebels are fighting for. They simply refer to themselves as “the good side”. I don’t even know if they know the cause.

Juvenile Justice #2

Rather than try and form an opinion on the issue, today I decided to find more background information on the topic. I found out proposed alternatives that people think will better the the current system. I read in a time magazine article that some people think that tough systems should be put in place. Some people think places like boot camp and military training would benefit those who commit violent crimes. I feel like I can see this going the other way. If you teach children how to be violent and put them in a violent environment they aren't going to become functioning members of society. This seems to be another gray area. Another alternative that seems to be out there is the idea of a juvenile detention centers. This idea seems to integrate the teens back into society and show them, through a system of rewards, how to avoid criminal situations. However, the problem with this idea is that the teens have to come home eventually. This seems to be the problem. What happens when you "fix" someone of their problem by putting them in a remote setting? You're only going to send them back to the (probably) violent place that they came from. Statistics seem to show that Juveniles in the detention system recommit crimes about 50% of the time. This may seem minuscule compered to the 70% of recommitted crimes after adult trial, but it is still a large number. If we consider what we want the goal of juvenile justice to be, then we will realize that we want the teens to eventually become fully functioning members of society. We can't exile them from communities and expect them to fit right in. This is impossible. This is where my opinion comes into play. Putting major offenders in adult prisons and then expecting them to be better when they come out just doesn't make sense. It defeats the purpose of a "correctional facility". Jails are meant to punish, however, juveniles should be rehabilitated.

Juvenile Justice #1

While I'm just getting started on my topic of Juvenile Justice, I have not yet to put two and two together. I'm fairly positive that I believe that juveniles should have their own court however, I think my opinion may change. I know one thing for sure. Something about the way they are treated in adult court is not right. It's hard to take grasp to it. We never really know when the child's mind is fully developed and if they really can mature and, once more, become fully functioning members of society. This is definitely something to consider when looking at the crimes that they commit. There has to be an area of black and white. There has to be an age limit. The mind works in ways that we do not quite understand. This is why I think that there should be an age that they have to grasp. If a teenager commits a more violent crime than an older teenager, they should be tried under the same court. It's hard to imagine to say that a criminal can be tried in a different court based on exactly what age they are. This is where this system can have a lot of flaws. The question remains "How can we put these kids back into society"? If we were to look at an environment that put kids in jail and the statistics that show how they end up turning out, we would see varied results. This is a big issue. Why aren't there more studies? The best solution I read was a system in Denmark. Rather than have a violent criminal in a correctional facility, they would be in more of a controlled home environment. Every negative action would have a negative consequence and the same would hold for positive actions. This would slowly integrate the criminal into how society works. Rewarding young people for positive actions seems to be a decent way of getting out of the criminal mindset. They can see that there is more to live for. Positive reinforcement is my stand on the issue so far. I don't have enough research to say if they should be eventually transferred into adult facilities. It seems as though it can go either way. However, I think that this system would only work for the nonviolent. In this issue, there are a lot of grey areas. These are the areas that need more research.
-Igor

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/juvenile/