In August 1988, Jasmine, 16, was two years into gang life in Compton when she shot down another girl. She was sentenced to life in prison and placed with hardened adults at the California Institute for Women. For a few harrowing days, she even ended up on Death Row.
Jasmine (not her real name) doesn't make excuses for what she did. But many experts now argue that children who kill are treated little better than animals when forced into the adult system.
Of the events leading to her shooting of the girl, Jasmine recalls that her gang, the CV 60s, got into a fight with Tortilla Flats gang members near a Compton school. The CV 60s culture, she says, was, "We wanna retaliate."
[For more of this story, written by Joshua Rofe, go to http://www.laweekly.com/informer/2014/07/30/how-the-system-brutalizes-children-who-kill-in-california]
Comments (0)