Should Teenagers get a Second Chance?

A. Isaac Senior Editor

Lifers as Teenagers, Now Seeking Second Chance

In December, the United Nations took up a resolution calling for the abolition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for children and young teenagers. The vote was 185 to 1, with the United States the lone dissenter.

Indeed, the United States stands alone in the world in convicting young adolescents as adults and sentencing them to live out their lives in prison. According to a new report, there are 73 Americans serving such sentences for crimes they committed at 13 or 14.

Mary Nalls, an 81-year-old retired social worker here, has some thoughts about the matter. Her granddaughter Ashley Jones was 14 when she helped her boyfriend kill her grandfather and aunt — Mrs. Nalls’s husband and daughter — by stabbing and shooting them and then setting them on fire. Ms. Jones also tried to kill her 10-year-old sister.

But Mrs. Nalls thinks her granddaughter, now 22, deserves the possibility of a second chance.

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Good read from the NY Times. Should children and teenagers who commit violent crimes be given less punishment than that of adults.

At what age do kids have a conscience? Did Ashley Jones know what she was doing.

Im all for rehabilitation but grisly murders like this make you shake your head.

Thoughts?

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