“Today I cannot think of Evan Miller in prison without thinking about three of my former cellmates: Damon, Mike, and Roger. Damon and Mike were both 16 when they were sentenced to life in prison. Roger was 16 when he wassentenced to 63 years. Only Damon had been found guilty of homicide.”
Dwayne Betts writes a piece in the Daily Beast today about his time inside adult prison as a juvenile and the Supreme Court Ruling in Miller v. Alabama. It is worth the read.
I found myself reflecting back on my time visiting inside Sing Sing talking to men who looked like they couldn’t possible be more than 30 and who had already done double digit years inside on life sentences that would keep them there most likely forever.
Amidst a criminal system that currently houses over 2 million million, half minority, perhaps the most wasteful practice in my opinion is taking a teenager off the street and incarcerating them for 70 years at a cost of $3.5 million (assuming average per year cost of $50,000) when our public education system is in shambles.
Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, essayist and national spokesperson for the Campaign for Youth Justice. He is the author of a memoir, A Question of Freedom (Avery/Penguin 2009), and a collection of poetry, Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James Books, 2010). In 1997, at age 16, Betts was prosecuted in adult court, and spent more than 8 years in an adult prison. In 2011, he was awarded a Radcliffe Fellowship to Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies.
Photo: Stephen Sheffield inside The Charles Street Jail