Living in Hell For Life by Marlene Martin

[CarpeDiem]

Dissident Voice
It's horrendous that such kids, who were tortured in their OWN country to confess to crimes they never committed in the first place, and are completely innocent, have to serve a life term, and without a parole while genocide criminals of the highest order pat their dogs on a highest executive office lawns... And look which countries do convict kids: US and Israel, and South Africa. Knowing that almost anyone would confess anything after amicable roundez-vouz with Shin Beth...

And among the prisoners with life sentences in the U.S. are 2,380 people who were sentenced to life without parole as “juvenile offenders”–in other words, they were under the age of 18 when the crimes they were accused of were committed–according to Human Rights Watch.

Of these juvenile offenders, 73 were sentenced to life in prison without parole at the age of 13 or 14 years old, according to research done by the Equal Justice Initiative.

To put this in perspective, no other country in the world sentences 13 year olds to life without parole. In fact, outside of the U.S., only 12 juvenile offenders anywhere in the world are serving this sentence, according to Human Rights Watch. Seven are in Israel, four are in South Africa, and one is in Tanzania.
There are over 2,000 in the United States.

 

[Ruth]

When I read an article like this, it occurs to me how little has changed over the past 1000 years (or more). People were being treated just the same in the middle ages as the 18th century. Only the death penalty was carried out over a shorter period of time.