Tag: juvenile offenders

Gov. Brown’s Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act of 2016 was a sham that gave false hopes of freedom to thousands of juvenile offenders who have grown up – and are now adults – in California prisons and Three Strikers, who believed they would finally see their 20-, 30- and 40-year-old priors, which have kept them behind bars long after their current sentence has been completed, go away. But that’s not the reality.

Is it fair that your child can make one mistake and spend the rest of his or her life paying for it? Help the youth gain our freedom so we can promote peace in society. We have been refined and formed into a new image. We are no longer who we were, but we have now grown to who we were made to be. Help us; help the youth out there, which in turn will help our future.

John “J-Rock” Carter was a juvenile lifer who was sentenced at 16 years old under a law that the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled was unconstitutional in Alabama v. Miller. Irony of Ironies. J-Rock never lived to see it. J-Rock fought for justice. He put himself on the front line of the struggle against inhumanity – and paid for it with his life. But his contribution will never be overlooked, ignored or down-played.

In the state of California, 227 people who were juveniles when they were convicted are serving life term prison sentences without the chance to ever re-enter society. Senate Bill 9, the Fair Sentencing for Youth Act, would allow sentence reduction to 25 years to life.

The Chinese government responded March 12 to the release of a U.S. human rights report critical of China by issuing its own report criticizing the U.S. human rights record. The report covered issues relating to crime, racial discrimination and poverty and accused the U.S. of using its hegemonic power to continue “trampling” on the sovereignty of other countries while “posing as the world judge of human rights.”

Stories in the Bay View about figures historically associated with prisoner issues, such as George Jackson, comprise a large percentage of the stories that the CDCR deems to pose threats to prison security and, in the hands of African-American prisoners, as indicia of gang affiliation. In other cases, the CDCR seizes the Bay View without referencing any particular article, the inference being that the newspaper itself is a threat to security, the mere possession of which is an indicator of gang association.