Ellen Wallace
News publications usually stay focused on the present, the “what’s happening now.” Occasionally an editor takes us back to an old story and gives us the “whatever happened to.” The Los Angeles Times has just published a long article on two children who murdered another child in Chicago in 1994, a gruesome tale of kids who dropped a younger kid out of a highrise window because he wouldn’t steal candy for them. It made headlines and had everyone talking for months because juvenile delinquents were a problem everywhere and the prison system didn’t seem the best place for them, but the alternatives were limited.
The story of how poorly those two murderers have done after spending their childhoods and some of their adulthood in prison reverberates in Switzerland where murderers who are minors are given light sentences. Two recent cases here have renewed the debate over how to sentence, treat and help reintegrate juveniles who commit serious crimes. The minor who was the leader of a group that murdered a 62-year-old man on a disability pension, in Vevey, will serve a far shorter time than his accomplices: he was just short of adulthood and they were over the line. The murder of a 16-year-old, Lucie Trezzini, by a 25-year-old man who had served time as a youth for attempted murder renewed the debate.
The LA Times story makes sober reading. Clearly, prison did not do the two men much good. They’re back on the streets, with little hope on their part or anyone else’s, that they’ll succeed in living normal lives. Few alternatives that might have worked better are mentioned.
GenevaLunch, 10 April 2009.
Filed under: Society
Tags: Chicago, juveniles, Lucie Trezzini, murderers, prison, sentences
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