Unscripted: Emotions vs. Logic (6:23) Donte Mitchell

Prison Radio Audio Feed

Today, I was watching the news and there had been a, a issue going on with this kid named Jah-Lah Vanderhorst who was 16 years old at the time that he had, um, unfortunately stabbed another young man who was 17, named Tyler Rhodes, from my hometown Albany in New York. So, he was going to court seeking to have his sentence reduced because of the fact that he was under 18 at the time that he had committed the offense. He was 16 years old, so he was seeking for youthful offender status, and the court decided to deny his motion for youthful offender status. However, the court, the judge decided to give him, um, 12 and a half years, uh, reducing his sentence from 25 to 12 and a half years. Now, there was a, outcry by certain elements of society who felt that, um, he was being given a, a lighter sentence or that justice wasn't being served.And this angered me because New York State, in 2017, passed the Raise The Age Bill. And the reason they passed that bill was based upon the science that said that people under 25 years old brains are not fully developed. Therefore, they engage in more, uh, you know, uh, uh, impulsive and de- in self destructive behavior. And there's a number of, hm, reports and, uh, research that has been done that confirms this to be true. Everyone acknowledges this. So, the law never went far enough in order to address the fact that these offenders shouldn't be treated like adults. But yet, because people can't look past their emotions, they're looking at the fact that this kid had got a reduced sentence somehow as being a travesty to justice. So, you can't have it both ways. Either the science is true or, this is the travesty to justice. See my opinion, it's a travesty to justice that people will allow their emotions to rule over the facts. The facts are when you are under 25 years old, you're going to engage in impulsive and criminal behaviors more than an adult would and therefore you shouldn't be treated as an adult. This is what the science says. So, for people to get upset at the fact that this kid got a reduced sentence to 12 and a half years, it's just absurd to me. Now, I want to say that my, my heart goes out to the family of Tyler Rhodes, who was murdered. The guy, the kid was a, a, a, a track star. He wa- he had a bright future ahead of him. And I don't want to say that, what I'm saying doesn't negate what happened to him. What happened to him was a tragedy. I want that to be very clear. But we also need to address the underlying issues that lead to these types of crimes that are committed, especially in Black and Hispanic communities. No one addresses that. If the science is what it is, therefore, there must be better policing or better outreach programs within the communities in order to prevent these types of crimes from happening in the first place. You can't just lock people up and think that you're just gonna solve the problem, but you don't want to spend the money nor the time or the research in- to to address those issues that are leading to young men in these urban inner city communities to kill and name one another.I also wanna mention the fact that there was this uh, uh, and you know, uh, people were, noting the fact that this kid Jah-Lah Vanderhorst had 12 violations and he had been in solitary confinement five times. To me that's not surprising. When you put a child in an adult prison environment, as research shows, they're going to be more corrupted and damaged than the average adult. So, what did you expect? You're not going- first, you, you, you're not going to give him a sentence that actually, uh, uh, merits or, or reflects his age at the time of his crime, one. Two, then when you put him in prison, you're not going to put him in an environment which is gonna be rehabilitative for him. You know, like in Connecticut, they started the TRUE program, and they have these young men who are being mentored by older prisoners and the program is doing real well to help these guys reform and change themselves. But yet in New York state, we don't have that. So, you're going to utilize the fact that he came to prison and he, you know, got involved in whatever incidents that led to him having these violations and being sent to solitary confinement. You can just put the blame exactly on him. Again, ignoring the signs. Ignoring all the evidence that there are ways to be able to prevent, there are ways to be able to prevent these types of incidents. There are ways to, to reform and rehabilitate these youth. Even the United States Supreme Court said that youth are more likely to be changed or more likely to be reformed than adults. So, it's like you can't have it one way, but yet you want to have it the other way. Either you acknowledge the science, or you don't. And this to me is a cowardly thing when it comes to corrections and when it comes to, uh, law enforcement that they don't want it to- they don't want to acknowledge this. They don't want to address what's really going on. And I really believe that people need to look deeper and further into it, instead of just looking at the surface. There's more to it than just what you see on the surface. Now, again, my heart goes out to Tyler Rhodes and his family. But I do believe that the judge who had reduced the man's sentence from 25 to 12 and a half years did a courageous thing. And that's what justice is supposed to do. You can't get mad at the judge who was supposed to be the independent arbitrary of the fact. Who's supposed to be not suaded by emotions or passions, but he's supposed to be suaded simply by the fact. The facts are these kids are engaging in these types of criminal activities because they're not given the proper support while they're in the streets. And then they're going to continue on with the criminalization in prison because they're not being provided with the proper rehabilitative treatment and programs. So, if you want to prevent these things from happening in the future, then I say invest more in preventing youth crime. Invest more in reforming and rehabilitating those young juvenile offenders who are incarcerated, instead of just looking at it from your emotions or your passions and saying, you know, justice wasn't served because this guy's not being punished harshly enough. Just doesn't make sense. This is Dontie S. Mitchell, reporting from Great Meadow Correctional Facility. Also known as Mfalme Sikivu. I thank you for listening, and God bless. (Sound of a cell door closing.) These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.