Juvenile Offenders

Shimika Gaskins: Imagine you are a middle or high school student, cut off from your friends and family, locked up in cells or rooms for hours, days and weeks without reliable access to teachers, arts, music or religious services.

Jeremy Loudenback: The state is prepared to send millions to create healthy rehabilitation models of juvenile justice, but locally administered programs must be genuinely and diligently overseen.

Ending Juvenile Probation now is being considered. It is the most profound reform possible: ending juvenile probation, rebuilding from scratch

Jeremy Loudenback: Along with Illinois, California is one of only two states to require a lawyer to explain to youth 15 and younger the consequences of giving up their Miranda rights.

Amber-Rose Howard: Convictions in the “land of the free” carry lifelong consequences which bind people to stagnant living. People are locked up and then set free, only to be locked out of society altogether.

Mark Vigil: The minute I stepped out of prison on April 21, 2016, I was greeted by my uncle David who drove me to a nearby IHOP to eat my first meal in society since 1980. I couldn't believe I was eating pancakes, sausage, bacon, eggs, orange juice, and coffee and not prison food.

Karen Heil: I have been sponsoring self-help groups with the inmates for the last 10 years–my true passion for continuing to work at the prison.

Juan Moreno Haines: I challenge you to come up with a curriculum that would show youngsters how to stop from developing the habits that send them to prison.

Juan Moreno Haines: The program, Code.7370, teaches inmates how to develop apps based on their inspirations that have a socially conscious component.

Juan Moreno Haines: This year, 11,000 children will be reunited with their parents in the visiting rooms of seven men’s prisons and three women’s prisons across the state.

Anthony Andrew Ferguson: Am I a threat to society? It probably depends on whom you ask. That is the million-dollar question. . . which the California Board of Prison Terms is tasked with answering during the parole suitability process.

Steve Grant: I would rather be a homeless man than to live where I am now, incarcerated for life in prison for a crime I could never consider inflicting on any human being for any reason at any time. I repeat and cannot stress enough, I am an innocent man!

Eved Romero: Where I was from, people who were “soft” simply didn’t make it, so I adapted to my situation. I put on a mask to guard my true self—the mask I would wear for many years, a mask of toughness, heartlessness, and ruthlessness.

Juan Moreno Haines: Can you believe that some people on their websites have even declared that maybe Legionnaires’ Disease at San Quentin is actually doing the public some good by killing off criminals who are worthless anyway?

Mark E. Vigil: I was not seeking to break my “keepers,” many of whom could care less about our concerns, but I wanted to achieve a personal victory—a stand I could take on principle.

Ronald Patterson: I am here, sitting in prison when I should be out, following the inspirational teachings and high expectations of so many of my teachers who recognized my potential and believed I would accomplish many good things.

Eric Ardoin: It took me years to realize the amount of damage I had perpetrated upon the victims of my crimes—people who were innocent but just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.