The re-entry problem
Alan Prendergast writes about Trout: A True Story of Murder, Teens, and the Death Penalty “The re-entry problem” for the Columbia Journalism Review.Prendergast writes eloquently about our inclination to incarcerate but our reluctance to forgive. He writes about the strong “victims rights lobby” that prevents the release of inmates eligible for parole who have demonstrated their rehabilitation, remorse and change.
Here’s an except and a link to Prendergasts’s article:
A staff writer for the Orlando Sentinel, Kunerth uses this obscure case to demonstrate the disturbing ease with which juveniles are transformed into adults in Florida’s justice system—not just Bonifay but his codefendants, one of whom may not have known that murder was on the menu that night…The defense is perfunctory, the verdicts swift. Bonifay and his uncle get the death penalty, while the other teens end up with life sentences, with the possibility of parole in 25 years.
