Argument Essay for ENG 1010

In the article “Teens Locked Up for Life without a Second Chance,” Stephanie Chen describes the predicament of Quantel Lotts, who at fourteen years old, was convicted of the first degree murder of his stepbrother.  On a broader spectrum, this article is about the increase of minors being tried and convicted as adults and the injustice of such sentences.

In the article, Chen refers to (unspecified) attorneys who argue that life in prison without parole is “cruel and unusual punishment” for minors.  That could be taken one step further to say, “Life without parole is cruel and unusual punishment for a person of any age, but even more so for minors.”

Most children are in the midst of a self-imposed formation.  The majority of individuals spend their childhoods discovering who they are, how they fit in and where they fit into society.  By saying a person is an adult at eighteen, our society is also saying anyone under eighteen has not fully formed and is not ready to fully integrate, as an individual, into society.  At eighteen, an American individual is expected to be solely responsible for him/herself.  Children are assumed to be under the guidance of a legal guardian before they are eighteen.  This guardian is also to be held responsible for the child.

Prison is supposedly an institution of reform.  If we sentence anybody to life without parole, we as a society, are saying, “We are incapable or unwilling to help correct your behavior.”  In essence, we are giving up on this individual.  In some instances, there very well may be individuals who are beyond reform.  However, sending someone who is beyond reform to an institute for reform seems wasteful for the institution, the individual, those who believe the institution works, as well as for those funding the institution.

Change is something of which people of all ages are capable.  However, change is also directly connected to the willingness of the parties involved; the reformer and the reformee.  Of all people, children have proven to have the most potential for change.  Children up to the age of eighteen (and beyond) are in a transitive and constant flux of self-defining formation, hopefully under the watchful and corrective guidance of a guardian.  Sending an individual who has not fully “formed” to an institute of “re-form” seems hypocritical of our societal definitions of responsibility.

Every other child in America is the responsibility of their guardian.  How is it that we can make an exception for heinous crimes or any other case?  Why are the parents not being punished?  Why do the parents walk away without as much as a slapped wrist?  How is it that these sentenced minors are expected to shoulder the weight of their own responsibility when every other child can rely on their parents to shoulder it for them?

Of course, there are instances where the guardians cannot be held responsible, for instance, if they were the victims of their child’s heinous crime.  In these instances, there is still opportunity for the reformation of the minor.  To say any child is beyond reform without first trying is ignorant, weak, rash, unsupportive and defiant of the very idea of reform.

Life without parole is a costly and hypocritical sentence for everybody, let alone minors.  To what purpose do we “save” these people from death?  We have stripped them of their ability to re-integrate, to pay penance for their mistakes, to attempt correction, to be forgiven, to live, or to thrive.  Instead they will sit in a cell for the rest of their lives (which at fourteen is a long time) and rot.  Death, it seems, would be a more merciful sentence.  If these people’s lives are so worthless that we are giving up on them, why should we as tax payers, pay to keep these people alive?

When our justice system rules against the laws it is sworn to uphold, that system loses its integrity.  If we disregard the purpose of our prisons (reform) and we ignore who we say will be responsible for minors (guardians), we open the gates for a flood of “exceptions” and the integrity of our laws will dilute until they no longer serve a purpose.  There will always be another “exception” and we will continually refer to one exception in order to make another.