‘Put Them to Work in Chain Gangs’

In his State of the State address last week, Gov. Pete Wilson proposed that youths as young as 14 be tried as adults in the case of serious crimes like murder. ERIN AUBRY spoke with high school students from around Los Angeles about the proposal, which has been endorsed by Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti.

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LE MANS STEELE

15, sophomore, Crenshaw High

Kids shouldn’t be tried as adults. When you’re young, you make a lot of mistakes and feel a lot of peer pressure. If you commit a crime, you can learn from your mistakes, and adults can’t. Kids should serve time, but not in an adult facility, around grown-up, hard-core people who would have a bad influence on them. My brother went to prison twice for drug trafficking; he’s in County Jail now waiting for trial. I don’t think he’s really learned from his mistakes. I live in a bad neighborhood, but my mom taught me well and I know I won’t do certain things. I don’t know about him.

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JENNIFER ROSENSTEIN

15, junior, University High

If you’re old enough to buy a gun and kill somebody, you’re old enough to pay the time for it. If someone kills someone else, there’s no excuse. I think kids kill because it gives them a sense of power, gives them a way of getting back at someone. It makes them feel better. The real problem is not the homicides so much as the fact that kids don’t have good role models in their parents anymore. A lot of parents don’t care about their kids; they don’t care about anything. I have a friend who’s experiencing that. It’s really sad. The parents pass that attitude on to their children. There’s nothing at stake.

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MARCELL McMILLON

14, freshman, Crenshaw High

Kids wouldn’t be able to defend themselves in jail with older people. When you’re 14, you’re still a kid; when you’re 18, you’re out of school, kind of grown and more able to protect yourself. I think they should make a separate juvenile facility for kids who commit serious crimes, like a special, strict camp where they’re isolated and can’t do a lot of things.

So I wouldn’t want a young person to go to prison, though I would want them to be punished correctly. You don’t want them to get out and do it again. My 16-year-old brother stabbed his girlfriend and got convicted for attempted murder. My dad turned him in. He did two years in a camp and then went to an adult prison, where he’s got about three years left. He hasn’t learned from his mistakes. He still thinks he was right.

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HERBERT MENDOZA

17, junior, University High

It’s a good idea. It’ll scare young people into realizing that they’ve committed a great offense. But the state shouldn’t worry about the punishment, they should worry about what causes the crime. They need to talk to kids, try and find out what exactly was the problem that drove them to do what they did. There has to be a reason.

Rather than just putting them in prisons, they should put them to work in chain gangs. Doing hard labor like that, working on roads and freeways, will really get them thinking. And it’ll help out the community at the same time.

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YOYCE JONES

15, ninth grade, Markham Middle School Medical Magnet

I don’t think we should send children to adult prisons. If a child grows up seeing violence all around them, that’s what they’re going to reflect. Even though murder is a serious crime, you shouldn’t stick a child in a place where there’s still basically murder going on. How is that child going to develop and know that there are better places, better things that he can do instead of going around killing? When they go to juvenile hall, they should at least get that type of counseling. Now if the child doesn’t want to change, that’s something else. But at least give them a chance first.

The reality is, the kid on the streets is going to kill somebody to get what he wants. He doesn’t have anything. He looks around and sees no affirmative action, less education. [Committing a serious crime] is his only option.

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BERNICE MARTINEZ

13, ninth grade, Markham

If a kid goes out and kills someone, something that an adult usually does, then they should be put in an environment where they understand that they’ve taken advantage of someone who can’t defend himself. If they’re around people who haven’t learned this fact, they might learn it themselves. Put the kids in adult prisons for at least six months, and if by then they haven’t learned something, then you need to do something else. But if you’re a 14-year-old kid you’re more likely to learn quickly.

The issue is problem-solving. These kids haven’t learned yet how to solve problems in the right way, how to deal with their feelings when they have a conflict or feel angry. You need to put them in an environment where they can learn how to do that.