TIM O’BRIEN, correspondent: The Alabama case before the Supreme Court stems from the brutal killing of 52-year-old Cole Cannon, whose body was found in the charred ruins of his mobile home nine years ago. Authorities first thought it to be an accident, but bruises on Cannon’s body and his broken ribs prompted them to investigate further. It turned out to be a murder committed by a neighbor, Evan Miller, who was only 14 years old, and his 16-year-old friend, Colby Smith. It was in the early morning hours; the three had been drinking heavily. When Cannon appeared too drunk to resist, the teenagers tried to rob him, but a fight broke out.

Children are capable of committing horrible crimes, even 14-year-olds like Evan Miller, who beat his victim over the head with this baseball bat and then crushed his ribs with it. He then placed a sheet over his head and told him, ‘I am God. I have come to take your life.’ A fourteen-year-old.

Candy Cheatham is the victim’s daughter.

CANDY CHEATHAM: Even with that, he did not stop beating him, and they set the trailer on fire—there were at least three or four points of origin—and left my Dad there to die. The cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head, and he had about seven or eight broken ribs in combination with the smoke inhalation. Then they proceeded to brag to friends about what they did.

O’BRIEN: Murder in the course of another felony—in this case arson– is a capital offense in Alabama, as it is in most states. The Supreme Court threw out the death penalty for juvenile offenders in 2005, so when the jury returned its guilty verdict, the judge could only sentence Miller to life without parole. The Supreme Court won’t allow more, and Alabama law doesn’t allow anything less for one convicted of capital murder. Prosecutors say Miller got what he deserved.

ROBERT LANG (Prosecutor, Lawrence County, MO): Our legislature and the people of our state believe that if you commit these type of crimes, there are only two punishments that are fitting, and that is either the death penalty or life in prison without parole. So his protection is he’s not going to get the death penalty, but he’s going to be put away for the rest of his life.

O’BRIEN: The Supreme Court is now expected to use the Miller case to determine whether states are required to consider giving juveniles a second chance, no matter what they did. And each side is giving up a little in this case. Alabama is not arguing that all juvenile murderers should be ineligible for parole, only those who commit the worst crimes—crimes that would bring a death sentence if the defendant were an adult.

Evan Miller is represented by the Equal Justice Initiative and its founder and executive director, Bryan Stevenson, and Stevenson isn’t asking anyone actually be given parole, only that when offenders are so young that at some point far down the road, they at least be allowed to demonstrate they are entitled to be set free.

BRYAN STEVENSON (Equal Justice Initiative): I think everyone is more than the worst thing they’ve ever done, and I think that policy makers can make decisions about how to punish them. But I think children are uniquely more than their worst act; they have quintessential qualities and characteristics that a decent society, a maturing society, an evolved society, we believe, is constitutionally obligated to recognize and protect.

O’BRIEN: An argument Stevenson pressed in court to a skeptical Justice Antonin Scalia.

STEVENSON: I think the easier rule to write would be that there is a categorical ban on all life without parole sentences for all children up until the age of 18.

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: How do I come to that decision? What, do I just consult my own preferences on this matter? Something like 39 states allow it. I mean, the American people, you know, have decided that’s the rule. They allow it, and the federal government allows it. So I’m supposed to impose my judgment on what seems to be a consensus of the American people?

O’BRIEN: John Neiman, Alabama’s solicitor general, says life without parole is a reasonable alternative to the death penalty, even for juveniles.

JOHN NEIMAN (Solicitor General, Alabama): The theory and the thought is that if someone doesn’t deserve the death penalty for that particular crime they deserve life without parole. That’s the appropriate way to express society’s outrage at these sorts of aggravated murders.

It is reasonable for legislatures to conclude that they’re going to draw a line in the sand with respect to aggravated murder, such that as a floor in terms of the appropriate punishment the defendant is going to get, at the very least, life without parole, a punishment that’s no doubt severe, but one that is less severe than the impact the crime has had on society.

O’BRIEN: But Attorney Bryan Stevenson reminded the justices that they have acknowledged in their past decisions that because children do not think like adults, they are less culpable.

STEVENSON: And the decision-making of children, the thinking of children is categorically different. They’re not thinking three steps ahead. They’re not thinking about consequences. They’re not actually experienced enough with the world to understand how they deal with their frustrations in the same way that an adult is, and so their judgments about what they intend to do, their declarations mean something very, very different.

O’BRIEN: At one point, the state’s demand for retribution appeared to give way to a justice’s concern for a child.

KENT HOLT (Assistant Attorney General, Arkansas): The principle justification in this case lies with the retributive principle. The punishment for this crime reinforces the sanctity of human life, and it expresses the state’s moral outrage that something like this could happen.

JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG: You say the sanctity of human life, but you’re dealing with a 14-year-old being sentenced to life in prison, so he will die in prison without any hope. I mean, essentially you’re making a 14-year-old a throw-away person.

CANDY CHEATHAM: Society needs to be protected, and it’s not throwing away a juvenile. If he wants to be rehabilitated, that can happen behind bars. It’s just too high of a cost to risk.

O’BRIEN: Candy Cheatham remembers her father as a “good man” and says how he died will haunt her for as long as she lives.

STEVENSON: If we win, the United States will still have the harshest punishment scheme for children in the world. We will still have very severe punishments in place to punish any offender who commits an aggravated crime.

O’BRIEN: The court was sharply divided in 2005 when it found the death penalty unconstitutional for juvenile offenders. Whether juveniles may also be spared life in prison with no parole when they commit murder isn’t any easier. Although some justices were sympathetic, others are known to feel that these decisions are best left to juries and state legislatures, not federal judges. The court’s opinions, and there will surely be several, are due in the next month.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Tim O’Brien at the Supreme Court.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: With its high walls, gates, and rituals, the Bhopal central jail looks forbidding, almost medieval. However, inside is a world of routine and order. It starts with the morning roll call for some 2000 men—-about a third more than the prison is supposed to hold—some of the most notorious convicts in the surrounding region. As in every prison there’s a hierarchy here, a subgroup of elite inmates. But these guys have earned the distinction not for being tough, but for being calm. In the prison’s main hall, some 150 men are led in the deep breathing yoga exercises by one of their own. For much of the morning, they’ll go through the whole cycle of yoga’s asanas, or postures, and breathing exercises that cover the entire body.

BINKU TOMAR (prison inmate convicted of murder): I feel healthy when I do yoga, and I don’t have any violent thoughts. It helps me have positive thoughts.

SURAJ BOSE (prison inmate convicted of murder): In the past, before yoga, my mind used to wander a lot. I used to be like a bird in a cage. I used to have a lot of anger.

DE SAM LAZARO: Both men are serving life sentences here for murder—in Tomar’s case, multiple murders.

BOSE: I get a lot of peace of mind after doing yoga. Whenever I do yoga exercises I really feel at peace. You really want to be at peace here.

DE SAM LAZARO: And they have one more significant incentive. For every three months in the yoga program, their jail sentences are reduced by 15 days. In India, even people sentenced to life can have their sentences reduced to as little as 14 years for good behavior, an evaluation largely in the hands of prison staff.

BOSE: I am hopeful. I’ve done my crime, and I have to do my sentence. It will be up to the officers to decide if my sentence will be reduced.

DE SAM LAZARO: For their part, prison officials say yoga, which was introduced into this facility two years ago, has brought them peace, too.

LALJI MISHRA (Prison Superintendent): We used to have a lot of conflicts, but we don’t see very many now. People are respectful of each other.

DE SAM LAZARO: Jail superintendent Mishra says the yoga program is being expanded across the prison system. Not only does it calm the jail atmosphere, he says, but it may also help thin the ranks through early release of those who’ve completed a course in yoga. He says the prison system in this central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh is overcrowded and understaffed.

MISHRA: We have 120 jails and 17 doctors for about 35,000 inmates. We have 40 health workers, but that’s not enough staff to look after the health of all the prisoners as is called for by the national human rights committee. We need to find a way to gradually release more of them.

DE SAM LAZARO: Prison officials say very few inmates who go through the yoga program have resorted to crime after their release. So the key question is: has yoga transformed these men—and how?

The most common definitions describe yoga as a system of exercises dating back 3000 years, practiced as a part of the Hindu discipline to promote control of the body and mind. At the prison, inmates also come from Muslim, Christian, and other faiths, so the superintendent says yoga is never presented as an extension of Hinduism. The majority of inmates here are Hindu.

MISHRA: Anyone who breathes can do yoga. If you breathe, yoga belongs to you.

DE SAM LAZARO: But yoga scholars say it involves much more than breathing exercises.

KAMLESH MISHRA (Yoga Scholar): If you practice yoga, it’s not just about making your body fit. It’s about a changing your mental state, your consciousness. The breathing exercises help increase oxygen flow to the vital organs. It stimulates the nervous system, brings sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems into balance. The whole way how you look at the work, look at other people, is transformed.

TOMAR: I can control my anger now. I want to go away from crime. I want to join the mainstream of society and support my parents.

BOSE: I’m not sure what kind of work I’ll get, but I know I’ll continue to do yoga.

DE SAM LAZARO: Whether and how long that resolve will endure is the key question. In other words, are minds truly transformed? Even a few inmates confess they’re not sure.

PRASHANTH TIWARI (prison inmate convicted of murder): I am definitely a changed person. I have good thoughts, but what about the others, those who would attack me? What are their thoughts? I would not be the first attack someone, but I would be the second if someone attacked me.

DE SAM LAZARO: There’s no hard evidence yet on the impact of yoga on recidivism, but prison officials say with the health and management benefits they can see no downside to a morning yoga class.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Bhopal, India.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: This is a reentry program for inmates about ready to be released back to their communities. It’s funded by the state of Hawaii and the social ministry of the Catholic Archdiocese of Honolulu. Angela Anderson is one of the fortunate participants. She’s been serving time for drug abuse.

ANGELA ANDERSON: When I had got out of jail before, you know, I went directly back to drugs, because that’s really all there was. But here I got structure. I made great friends. You have classes that you have to attend to. You have to live to a schedule.

SEVERSON: What it does is lessen the odds that she’ll go back to prison. In 2009, the latest statistics available, there were 2.3 million Americans serving time behind bars, the highest documented incarceration rate in the world. Since the early 1970s, the prison and jail population has increased by 700 percent. Now, faced with the staggering costs of incarceration, about $55 billion a year, politicians are asking community and faith-based volunteers to help the reentry process for the hundreds of thousands of ex-cons who are coming home. The state of Hawaii is no exception. To reduce the spiraling costs of incarceration, a number of states started exporting inmates to cheaper localities, often to other states and quite often to private for-profit prisons. Over the years, Hawaii has shipped thousands of inmates to the mainland. At latest count, there are over 1800 in one prison in Arizona. But the state has discovered that the costs are considerably greater than projected, and not just in taxpayer dollars.

JUDGE STEVEN ALM: We’ve had a terrible “nimby” problem over the years—not in my backyard—about building another prison.

SEVERSON: Judge Steven Alm started the nationally recognized Project HOPE, a program for probation violators that has cut recidivism rates in half.

ALM (speaking to prisoners): But when you’re out in the world probably you’re the one who’s going to be making all these decisions.

SEVERSON: Judge Alm says Hawaii inmates doing time in Arizona are deprived of crucial family support.

ALM: Families are not going to be able to fly up to Arizona to see them. They’re not going to be able to keep that kind of relationship. They’re going to get cut off, and some are going to get cut off from their culture, from their faith organizations. It does create a real problem.

SEVERSON: Some are now reconsidering the wisdom of locking up prisoners from Hawaii almost 4,000 miles from their families. Kat Brady is with the Community Alliance on Prisons.

KAT BRADY: And what they found was that people who served their sentences abroad actually when they’re released and if they get rearrested it’s for violent crimes. Where people who serve their sentences in Hawaii, upon release if they get rearrested it’s usually for a drug crime.

SEVERSON: Nationally, about six out of 10 inmates commit another crime within three years of being released. Brady and others here now think that Hawaiian prisoners serving in Arizona are bringing gang crime back with them. Jeffrey Silva was in Arizona, part of a 10-year sentence for failing a urine drug test while on parole.

JEFFREY SILVA: You feel alienated way out there and stuff like that, so you form friendships with each other and stuff and bonds, and next thing you know it’s a gang.

SEVERSON: Ted Sakai is a former warden and Hawaii public safety director. He says Hawaiians feel a cultural and religious connection to their homeland.

SAKAI: What we have found is that just having somebody you can talk to, just having a connection with your neighbor, church member, with—definitely with somebody in your family can make a big difference.

BRADY: There was a big study done in California, probably the premiere study, and they found that people who are incarcerated who had no visits were six times more likely to be rearrested, where people who had at least three visits from three separate family members a year—their recidivism rate was much lower.

SEVERSON: Nationally this year about 650,000 inmates will be coming home from prison. There are so many and so few services to help them reenter society instead of reentering a life of crime. Here in Hawaii, the local Catholic Church asked for some help from Gene Williams.

GENE WILLIAMS: Faith-based organizations, as a matter of public policy, have been designated first responders by default. But they’re being asked to do it with no resources.

SEVERSON: Are they stepping up?

WILLIAMS: They’re stepping up with collections, with volunteer hours, but there’s a real problem. That’s not sustainable.

SEVERSON: Williams heads a national congregational and community nonprofit organization.

WILLIAMS: And when you’re talking about communities having to absorb and reintegrate people coming back from prison, those costs are astronomical. You have mental health costs, you have housing, social services, family reunification, anger management, drug treatment. There are a whole host of reentry ingredients that faith-based organizations are actually, you know, investing in and providing.

SEVERSON: Les Estrella works with addicted inmates for the Archdiocese of Honolulu. Years ago, he served time for drug abuse.

LES ESTRELLA: Research has shown that faith, as far as recidivism, recovery from substance abuse, you know, mental health, those types of disabilities, is really a good resource. It’s a good place to be, it’s s safe place for the most part.

SEVERSON: This program, operated by Catholic volunteers, provides housing and training for inmates about to reenter their community. Elliott Kaimi served time in Arizona. Now he’s learning job skills.

ELLIOTT KAIMI: Yes, this program teaches you how to fill out applications, make resumes. They also teach you how to do what they call a mock trial interview, one on one with a staff, so that way when you do get interviewed you don’t feel nervous.

ANDERSON: You can go in there in the morning, get on the Internet, you check your email, you go to Craig’s List, Hirenet, put in applications. It’s really wonderful.

SEVERSON: Angela got a job working at a homeless shelter.

JAMES RODRIGUES: I’ve been going out from November every day looking for a job.

SEVERSON: Any luck?

RODRIGUES: No, but I still—everyday I put in at least one application a day.

SEVERSON: James Rodrigues is now in a low-security Hawaiian prison that allows him to leave the institution each day to look for work. After the long separation from his parents, they’re quite happy to provide transportation. Gene Williams says faith-based groups are so overburdened with prisoner reentry they need help, too.

WILLIAMS: Faith-based organizations believe in redemption. In many ways, though, that belief system is being exploited. Government can say, “We can’t provide programming for people coming home because we have budget constraints.” But faith-based organizations, if they refuse people they are undermining the very integrity of their institutions, because compassion is part of their mission, and so what you find now are congregations who are struggling, and many who are developing compassion fatigue.

SEVERSON: Meanwhile, Hawaii has a new governor who has pledged to move the prisoners back to the islands and end the contract with the Arizona prison. Whether there will be funding to help with their reentry remains to be seen.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Hilo, Hawaii.

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BOB FAW, correspondent: For the women of the Magdalene community, now mornings begin quietly, with prayer.

WOMEN PRAYING: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

FAW: With meditation and expressions of gratitude.

WOMAN: Today I don’t feel alone. I know God has got me right where he wants me.

FAW: It is a long way from the violence and addiction they have known. Tara Adcock, once in and out of prisons, started that life on the streets of Nashville at 17.

TARA ADCOCK: My pimp—I was just like his everything. He fed me with crack, bought me new clothes. I didn’t know nothing about none of this, and then just one night he said come on I’m taking you and another girl, and she’s going to show you the ropes. So he dropped me off right here. I’ve been dragged up and down this road. I was raped. I hated myself.

FAW: For 12 years, Regina Mullis also worked the streets.

REGINA MULLIS: I never thought that I would be in prostitution and an addict. I did it because this man offered me $300 to be an escort at a dinner ball, and he was a doctor, and he sent for me in a limousine, and I was like, if this is what it’s about I can do this. But throughout the years quickly it went from being a $300 escort to, you know, just accepting $5.

FAW: Regina has a job now after going back to school and reclaiming her children. She survived, along with Tara, with the help of a remarkable program called Magdalene started by a somewhat unconventional Episcopal priest, Becca Stevens—a free spirit who not only preaches barefoot at the Vanderbilt University chapel but who turned a vision into reality.

REV. BECCA STEVENS: I wanted to create a space that felt like it was healing and luxurious and safe and hopeful for women, so that there would be a space to feel like you could do the work and the healing that needed to happen in your life.

FAW: What Stevens created was a nonprofit organization for female addicts and prostitutes, most who have been sexually abused, all who have been raped. By hand they create natural bath and beauty products—soaps, balms, candles—all made under the label Thistle Farms.

STEVENS: The thistle is the weed or the flower, depending on your perspective, that still grows on the streets and the alleys where the women walk. It has the deepest taproot of any plant, and it can push through two, three inches of concrete. It is a great reminder that all of us, with our prickly outer selves, have this beautiful, deep, rich center that’s a gift from God.

FAW: Here they not only pick thistles but crush, moisten, soften and then turn the thistle into paper. With the products and through donations which Thistle Farms has raised, Stevens has opened a residential community of six homes where women off the streets are given rooms and food for two years at no charge. Stevens takes neither federal nor state money.

STEVENS: It’s great because it keeps you pretty honest, and it keeps you working pretty hard. You know, give us this day our daily bread. Be thankful for this day and for all the gifts. I mean people give to us because they’re grateful for all they’ve been given.

FAW: Here residents not only get shelter but medical help, counseling, and spiritual guidance.

STEVENS (speaking to woman): Where is God in this recovery for you?

FAW: And here faith is a component of healing, but no doctrines are taught. Nothing is force-fed or imposed. There is a very spiritual, loving foundation, Magdalene graduate Katie Lynn says, but…

KATIE LYNN: …they don’t push religion on you, so that you can make the choice of your own, because a lot of people such as myself come from a background where I was told that if anything bad I did God was going to get me.

STEVENS: I think most of the women have pretty strong feelings about what their spiritual path looks like, and I’m more interested in encouraging them to have that religious and spiritual voice, where nobody’s saying like this is what you need to believe.

FAW: For the women who come here there is no staff hovering about, no one telling them what to do. What they do get: something most of them have never gotten before.

KATIE LYNN: I felt unconditional love. They loved me for who I was, and they wanted to help me through anything, just to get better.

FAW: At first that environment, that acceptance seemed unreal to Tara and Shelia McClain. When she was very small, Shelia was repeatedly abused for years. Leaving home at 14, getting addicted, at 18 she turned to prostitution. Tara and Shelia bonded when they were working the streets.

ADCOCK: Like we’d go do a trick, a date together, or we’d go to an apartment.

SHELIA MCCLAIN: We were treacherous, okay?

ADCOCK: I would rob and she would…

MCCLAIN: I would flat-back.

ADCOCK: She would flat-back.

MCCLAIN: We were treacherous out there together.

FAW: So on a good day you could make how much?

MCCLAIN: Most days it was easy to make at least $1,000 a day.

ADCOCK: Yeah.

FAW: They both hated it, they say, but neither could break loose.

MCCLAIN: After I turned the trick to get a room, I’d feel the degradation hit and then I’d have to buy dope to medicate how I was feeling about just dealing with the trick, and it’s a vicious cycle, you know.

STEVENS: My theory is no woman ended up on the streets by herself. Whether it’s a failed family, violence experienced early on, she didn’t get out there by herself, and so it’s crazy to think she’s going to come off the streets by herself, you know, out of jail with no provisions. They’re going to call their drug dealer to come get them, and it just starts over again.

FAW: Ready for a change, Shelia wrote to her judge from prison asking to be admitted to the Magdalene program. Two years later, she graduated with the judge by her side. She is different now: clean, owns her own house, is married with two children, and a college student. Tara, who graduates in December, has also put her drug-ridden past behind.

ADCOCK: There was no judgment. They just want to help you. They showed me what I can do, you know, and I believe in myself today.

FAW: Assisted on that Vanderbilt campus chapel by her Grammy-winning songwriter-husband, Marcus Hummon, the barefoot priest sees the Magdalene homes and Thistle Farms as part of her ministry.

STEVENS: I’m doing the best that I can to live out my faith as I understand it, and I’m doing it on the path that I have chosen, and I’ve chosen as an Episcopal priest to do this work.

FAW: Her ministry springs partly from sexual abuse she suffered from a deacon in her church when she was just six to eight years old.

STEVENS: I get some of the recovery issues. I see in my own abuse in my life as in some ways strangely a gift—that I learned a lot. It’s nothing I would have asked for, but it is a gift, and it’s a powerful tool. So I’m a defender of a lot of women, because I know you don’t get over that stuff. I have a tenderness for what it does and how it makes you look at the world.

FAW: Through natural products, private grants, and gifts Stevens has raised nearly $13 million, with it sending the women of Magdalene to visit women in prison. She has also helped fund a school in Ecuador and to help establish a business for women’s groups in Rwanda—abroad and at home demonstrating what she says is the same theme:

STEVENS: That love is the most powerful force for social change. That love could be powerful enough to change a life. And what I think it means now is it has changed my life, and I think I’m really different because of the gift of this work. I believe that more now than when I started out.

FAW: What happens at Thistle Farms and at Magdalene seems to be working. Seventy-two percent of the women who complete the program, says Stevens, are clean two-and-a-half years later. And while not everyone embraces the program—this streetwalker, Angie, said she just wasn’t ready when her old friends, Tara and Katrina, urged her to join— nearly 80 to 100 women are waiting to get in. For those who do graduate from what Becca Stevens has started, there is exhilaration and pride and a conviction that their lives have been transformed.

ADCOCK: I know that now there is a different way, and I will never go back. Never. And a lot of people say you never say never, but I know I will never go back.

MULLIS: My gift now is to be, now that I’m breathing, is to be able to show other women a way out, and Magdalene was that way out for me.

FAW: A way out where abused women bond sharing simple daily chores, where they grow closer helping one another, where, with hands that have known hardship they now make candles which burn sweetly, where the faces change but the circle of healing grows stronger.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Bob Faw in Nashville, Tennessee.

SAUL GONZALEZ, correspondent: Los Angeles County’s Twin Towers Correctional Facility: it’s one of the largest jails in the country. Behind its walls, over 3,000 men are locked up as their criminal prosecutions continue. Many prisoners are accused of committing murder, rape, and a variety of gang-related crimes. However, this jailhouse is also a house of worship to Dennis Gibbs, a senior chaplain at Twin Towers. His Sunday services are like few others, held in a cell block and closely watched by sheriff’s deputies.

CHAPLAIN DENNIS GIBBS: I think this is a holy place. I believe that we are standing on holy ground. This is a place of reconciliation and healing, and so I really see this as—in many ways this is my parish.

GONZALEZ: Chaplin Gibbs is one of dozens of clergy men and women from a variety of faiths who offer pastoral care and spiritual guidance to the inmates at Twin Towers. Although an Episcopalian, Chaplain Gibbs provides spiritual counseling to all prisoners who approach him, no matter what their particular faith.

GIBBS (speaking to prisoner): Hey, man, how is it going? Good to see you again.

PRISONER: Could you say a little prayer for me and my girl, my baby?

GONZALEZ: Although the chaplain doesn’t condone what these men are accused of doing, he also doesn’t apologize for showing them compassion.

GIBBS (praying with prisoner): God the Holy Spirit be upon you and remain with you forever.

GIBBS: These men are wounded, these men are orphans, and these men are largely forgotten, and I think it’s powerful that we bring church to them and remind them that they are a part of our community, and that they are beloved by God.

CARLOS ORTIZ: You build a bond, I’d say, with the chaplain. You build a bond of friendship.

GONZALEZ: Carlos Ortiz, who’s been at Twin Towers for six months, was recently convicted of drug possession. He says Chaplin Gibbs and other jailhouse clergy help inmates sustain and develop their faith when they need it the most.

ORTIZ: If you don’t have faith, they provide faith. You know, I am a man of faith, so just the fact there is someone that you can talk to, someone that can acknowledge about God, that’s something good for inmates. The situation you are at might not be good, but he makes you realize that you are good spiritually and physically, you are in a good spot.

GONZALEZ: Along with larger worship services, the chaplains spend much of their time holding private one-on-one sessions with prisoners who want to talk to them. Episcopal chaplain Greta Ronnigen says she’s not interested in why the men she ministers to are here.

GONZALEZ: You don’t care what the guys are in here for?

CHAPLAIN GRETA RONNIGEN: No.

GONZALEZ: Why? That seems counter-intuitive.

RONNIGEN: Because I am here for their spiritual support. I am not a lawyer. I am not social services. I’m about where they are with God. I am here to talk to them as they turn, turn away from the dark that has been their past, and they are looking, they are seeking.

GONZALEZ: Some of the prisoners at the center of complex cases, such as murder or gang-related crimes, can be held at Twin Towers for years before they’re convicted and sentenced to state prison. Except in extraordinary circumstances, say when an inmate might be threatening to murder someone, the jailhouse clergy keep confidential what they hear from prisoners, as Chaplain Gibbs explained in a conversation back at the Los Angeles Episcopal diocese.

GONZALEZ: If an inmate says something in a confession and admits to something horrible you don’t have to report it, right?

GIBBS: It’s protected.

GONZALEZ: It’s protected.

GIBBS: Yeah, it’s protected. The nature of confession is that it is a sealed sacrament, and that’s important for the men. Once the priest puts on that stole and enters into the sacrament of the church, it is a completely sealed and confidential conversation, just like it would be with somebody confessing in their church.

GONZALEZ: The presence of the chaplains at county lockups also helps ease tensions and assuage anger, and the sheriff’s deputies welcome that. However, at Twin Towers security and punishment always come before worship, and that’s especially true in the jail’s highest security units or pods.

GIBBS: In this particular unit they are complicated cases. I would say a very good majority of the men are in here for homicide, and there’s a lot of gang-related crimes in this pod.

GONZALEZ: Here, services are often conducted through steel doors and plexiglass, and services, as in the day we were shooting, are often cut short by lockdowns.

GIBBS (speaking to Chaplain Ronnigen): Greta, full lockdown. We gotta go.

RONNIGEN: Sorry, guys. Peace.

GIBBS: Yeah, the jail just went on full lockdown, so we never really know what that is about, just that a full lockdown means that there is no movement whatsoever, so we want to wrap up rather quickly. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get out of the jail.

GONZALEZ: Although he doesn’t get into the details, Chaplain Gibbs knew about confinement long before he arrived at Twin Towers six years ago.

(speaking to Chaplain Gibbs): You were in jail yourself?

GIBBS: I was, yeah. I have lived this despairing life to a great degree, absolutely. My personal response to the call to follow Christ has led me back to the streets where I once was homeless. It’s led me back to the drug-addicted and alcoholic, as I once suffered. It’s led me back to the jails, where I once was a prisoner.

GONZALEZ: I’m sure, Chaplain, when the men at Twin Towers hear about your past, and I’m sure you share some of your past with them, it gives you a particular credibility.

GIBBS: I think it does. I think it changes the conversation to a degree and kind of alerts people that I am not just some do-gooder Christian guy coming in to tell you that Jesus loves you.

GONZALEZ: That’s certainly the case for prisoner David Yi.

DAVID YI: He does give us hope. That he was once an inmate also and now this is where he’s at, helping other people find themselves—it’s just a lot of hope.

GONZALEZ: He’s a good model to follow?

YI: Exactly. Someone you can lean on.

GONZALEZ: One of the Twin Towers prisoners Chaplain Gibbs has gotten to know the best in recent months is also the most unusual. He’s William Manson, a scholarly 80-year-old physician recently convicted of killing his ex-wife. Already in the hospital ward, Manson knows he’ll likely die behind prison walls.

WILLIAM MANSON: I think that the sentence was just under the circumstances. I did the crime. Now I’m paying the price.

GONZALEZ: And spiritually are you armed for this, for this life that you have ahead of you, being a man of faith?

MANSON: I don’t know. I think so.

GIBBS (speaking to William Manson): God bless you.

MANSON: Thank you very much.

GIBBS: Would you like to pray?

MANSON: Yes.

GIBBS: As chaplains we absorb people’s sadness, their brokenness, their wounding, their depth of spiritual despair, and we are very aware of that as chaplains. I think in many ways we hold for these inmates often what they cannot hold for themselves.

(anointing and blessing prisoners): May your wounds be healed.

GONZALEZ: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Saul Gonzalez in Los Angeles.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: The US Supreme Court ruled this past week that juvenile offenders—those under 18 when their crime was committed—may no longer be sentenced to life in prison without parole except when the crime was murder. For more than a year, since before the case went to the High Court, Tim O’Brien has been reporting the story.

TIM O’BRIEN, correspondent: Kenneth Young, now 24, is serving a life sentence in Florida for a series of hotel robberies in the Tampa area in June of 2000. He had just turned 15 and was acting at the direction of an older accomplice—a crack dealer to whom his mother owed money.

KENNETH YOUNG (Inmate, Florida Dept. of Corrections): He threatened to hurt my Momma.

O’BRIEN: What did he say he’d do?

YOUNG: Kill her.

O’BRIEN: If you didn’t go along.

YOUNG: Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN: Although Young never held the gun, he was still sentenced to four consecutive life terms. Florida had abolished all parole five years earlier, which meant Young, notwithstanding his youth and the fact that he never physically hurt anyone, would spend the rest of his life in prison.

This week, the US Supreme Court found that to be, in principle, unconstitutional—a violation of the Eighth Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment. The categorical rejection is welcome news for about 130 youthful offenders who, like Kenneth Young, had been serving life without parole for crimes in which no one died. It is also a stunning victory for Young’s attorney, Paolo Annino, who runs the Children in Prison Project at Florida State University. Annino had been crusading in state legislatures for years to allow parole for all juvenile offenders, no matter how serious their crimes.

PROFESSOR PAOLO ANNINO (Florida State University College of Law): Oh absolutely. I think we’re immoral ultimately as a nation. This is no different from slavery or other major moral issues. Placing children in adult prisons for life is a death sentence for children. Do we want to do that as a society?

O’BRIEN: In its decision, the Court relied heavily on research by Annino showing that while 37 states allow sentencing juveniles to life in prison without parole for non-homicides, such sentences in reality are quite rare. Justice Anthony Kennedy, for a five-judge majority, went even further, writing the practice “has been rejected the world over…the United States is the only nation that imposes [it.]” The Court also heard from a coalition of twenty religious groups who wrote that life without parole for juvenile offenders is contrary to the central values of their faiths—“mercy, compassion and forgiveness.” The Court’s decision does not guarantee that Kenneth Young—or any other juvenile offenders—will ever be released. But it does guarantee they now are at least entitled to a chance.

For Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, I’m Tim O’Brien in Washington.

Click here to view the original April 10, 2009 story and additional Wintley Phipps videos.

Pastor WINTLEY PHIPPS (singing at National Prayer Service, Washington National Cathedral):  “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound . . .”

KIM LAWTON:  Grammy-nominated Gospel singer Wintley Phipps is a familiar voice at big national events. At President Barack Obama’s National Prayer Service following his Inauguration, Phipps’s rendition of “Amazing Grace” brought the entire National Cathedral audience, including the new president and first lady, to their feet. But he says it’s just as meaningful to him when he sings in places like prisons.

Pastor  PHIPPS: There is a sense that you’re giving hope to people who really need it.

LAWTON:  For Phipps, who is also a Seventh-day Adventist pastor, music is a ministry and, he says, one of the deepest expressions of his Christian faith.

Pastor PHIPPS: Music is almost to me an echo of the sounds of the divine world, and when you hear these sounds, it stirs something deeply spiritual within you.  Music also is the most powerful way of impressing the human mind with hope.

LAWTON: Hope has been a hallmark not only of Phipps’s musical career, but in his charitable efforts as well.  In 1998, Phipps founded the Dream Academy, a national nonprofit for at-risk kids. Born in Trinidad, he says hope was crucial in overcoming his own at-risk childhood.

Pastor PHIPPS: I was born to a troubled home, and I used to get away from my parents’ troubles — I had a little red tricycle, and I’d go in the back yard of my house, and I would turn the tricycle on its side and use one of the backside wheels as a steering wheel, and I would sit there for hours, and I would dream that I was flying to faraway places in the world and meeting important people when I was six, seven years old, and then I wanted to be like Tom Jones.  I’d go around the house singing, “It’s not unusual to be loved.”  I just wanted to be Tom. But something was missing to me.

LAWTON: Despite a difficult family life, Phipps says his mother always prayed for him and told him that God had a special plan for his life.  As a teenager, Phipps embraced her faith as his own.

Pastor PHIPPS:  At the age of 16, God walked into my life and said, “I’ve seen your dreams. Give me your dreams, and I’ll let you see what I’ve been dreaming for you.”

Singing at National Prayer Service

LAWTON:  He attended an historically black Seventh-day Adventist college in Alabama, where he met Linda, now his wife of 32 years.  Then, Phipps says, God began providing opportunities for him to sing in national venues such as a 1984 appearance on “Saturday Night Live” with Jesse Jackson.  He came to the attention of Billy Graham’s team and became a frequent performer at the evangelist’s crusades.

Pastor PHIPPS (singing in Washington): “Talk about a child that do love Jesus.”

LAWTON: Phipps also became a favorite in Washington. He’s sung for every president since Ronald Reagan.

Pastor PHIPPS: I’ve never had a manager or never had an agent, and yet some of the most wonderful moments that a singer could ever dream of have happened to me, and I believe it’s providential.

LAWTON: The idea for the Dream Academy came after he got involved with a prison ministry.

Pastor PHIPPS: I did not know that so many young men in prison looked like my sons, and when I saw it I was shaken. One of every three young black men in America between the ages of 18 and 30 are in prison today or supervised by the court system either on probation or parole.

LAWTON: Phipps then learned that 60 percent of the young people who end up in prison are the children of prisoners. He wanted to break the cycle of intergenerational incarceration. The Dream Academy offers after-school mentoring and interactive academic tutoring to children of prisoners and kids falling behind at school.

Pastor PHIPPS: One of the most exciting things that can ever happen in a child’s life is to know that , “You mean God thinks about me?  Or God dreams about me?”  And he’s got a dream for my life?”  And when you catch a little glimpse of what that dream is, wow, it changes everything.

LAWTON:  Phipps has enlisted the support of some of his famous connections for the project.  One of his biggest benefactors is his longtime friend Oprah Winfrey.  The lesson of faith, he says, is that things aren’t always as they seem and that hardship can be overcome.  In these uncertain economic times, he’s released a new music DVD called “No Need to Fear.”

LAWTON:  It’s a theme he finds throughout the old spirituals that he often performs.

Pastor PHIPPS (singing): “Swing low sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home . . .”

The Negro spiritual teaches us that you’re going come up rough sides of mountains, and you’re going to have difficulties.  But faith gives you that ability to weather any storm.

(singing): “I looked over Jordan and what did I see?”

LAWTON:  It’s the core theme as well for the song that has become his signature, “Amazing Grace.”  He finds great spiritual lessons in the history of the song.

Pastor PHIPPS:  A lot of people don’t realize that just about all Negro spirituals are written on the black notes of the piano, and they just keep recurring.  Probably the most famous white spiritual that’s built on this slave scale was written by a man by the name of John Newton who, before he became a Christian, used to be the captain of a slave ship and many believe heard this melody that sounds very much like a West African sorrow chant (hums “Amazing Grace”).  And it has a haunting, haunting, plaintive quality to it that reaches past your arrogance, past your pride, and it speaks to that part of you that’s in bondage, and we feel it. We feel it. It’s just one of the most amazing melodies in all of human history.

(performing “Amazing Grace” on stage): “To sing God’s praise than when we’ve  first begun. Hallelujah, hallelujah. Amen.”

LAWTON: Another lesson, he says, on how hope always triumphs. I’m Kim Lawton in Vero Beach, Florida.

MARY ALICE WILLIAMS, guest anchor: In inner cities across the US high numbers of African-American men are caught up in the criminal justice system. It’s costly to keep them in prison. It’s also costly to the communities they leave behind — and return to. Phil Jones reports.

PHIL JONES: Welcome to Brownsville — a pocket of poverty inside Brooklyn, New York, a place where crime and prison often are a way of life.

RONALD HERRON: Both my parents were drug addicts. My father wasn’t at home.

Ronald Herron

DEJUAN SMITH: I went to prison for murder in the second degree.

NATHANEL RICE: The first time for robbery — two years; second time for robbery —12 years; third time for drug possession.

VINCE MATTOS (Community Activist): I was out hustling narcotics. What I would have to tell Mom is, “Look, I found a whole bunch of money!” I would see Mom crying because she was behind on bills or something like that. I would come in and say, “Mom, look I found x, y and z.” You know, she was like, oh, you know, “God is good” — this and that.

JONES: But Vincent Mattos’s mother is proud of her 42-year-old son.

Mr. MATTOS (speaking to men): Hey brothers. How you doing?

JONES: He now roams these troubled streets as a community activist. He knows the turf.

Mr. MATTOS: Young men that’s out on the corner from sun-up to sundown, falling back to do what they know to do to earn a living because there’s no jobs for them. There’s no helpful reentry program that’s in place right now. Whatever you want, you can get it on this strip. Drugs, sex, and guns, that’s what’s major out here.

JONES: What else is major — the pervasive presence of police with the task of arresting the bad guys and putting them behind bars. There is no doubt that police activity decreases crime. But is there a tipping point, when legitimate law enforcement, designed to protect the public, may have unintended consequences: promotion poverty, even more crime?

ERIC CADORA (Director, Justice Mapping Center): The current overuse and overdependence on criminal justice is a complete failure. It’s having no impact on these issues of public safety and crime. That’s not to say there isn’t a need for a level of criminal justice. But this radical overuse is not accomplishing those goals.

Eric Cadora

JONES: In the 1970s, there were about 200,000 inmates in US prisons. Today there are about two million. For years law enforcement used crime mapping to target places where the crimes were being committed. Eric Cadora, director of an organization called the Justice Mapping Center, is an advocate for sentencing reform and prison alternatives. He proposed another use for mapping.

Mr. CADORA: I said, “Well, what if we don’t do crime mapping? What if, instead, we mapped where people lived who are going into jail and prison every year?” When we started doing maps of where people lived, we found hugely concentrated neighborhoods where vast majorities of people were going to prison and jail and coming back, and other neighborhoods where nearly none were.

This is New York City. The brightest red show the highest rate per thousand adults, male adults, admitted to prison for a single year. Let’s say there are about 100,000 people living in Brownsville — about half of them are male, that’s about 50,000. About — between 10 and 13 percent are going to prison and jail every year.

JONES: This increased prison population has come at a staggering cost to taxpayers.

Mr. CADORA: We can now calculate, block by block, how much we’re spending to remove and return people en masse from and back to that block.

JONES: This cluster of housing projects is what Caldora calls a “Million Dollar Block.”

Mr. CADORA: We found about 150 individual blocks in New York City for which we were spending more than $1 million a year to remove and return people to prison and jail.

Vince Mattos

JONES: Cadora uses dark red to show the concentrations in other states. They are maps that call for new directions.

Mr. CADORA: What these maps have done is accumulate the effect over the course of a year of a criminal justice and imprisonment system. What’s heated up here is a mass migration with the costs of having to move back and forth from this neighborhood to prisons upstate and back. So what we’re seeing here is constant grappling with resettlement, with disruption, cost of split families, tough health care.

JONES: Greg Jackson, another civic activist and a life-long resident of Brownsville, doesn’t need a map. He’s seen his own community imprisoned.

GREG JACKSON (Community Activist): Incarceration is not just the individual going to jail, but it’s the whole family going to jail, for Brownsville. Everybody’s suffering from it.

JONES: How’s that?

Mr. JACKSON: Because when this individual comes out of jail he still can’t find employment. And that person, the kids he left behind, the parents he left behind, the wife he left behind, they all suffer in the interim. So, when he comes out you think, “Wow, it’s a good time, my father’s coming out of jail, my mother’s coming out of jail.” There’s nothing good about it.

JONES: For one thing, felons aren’t allowed to live in these public housing projects, although some do. Others end up homeless, and most are jobless. Ask Dejaun Smith, still struggling eight years after his release.

Mr. SMITH: I’ve done odd jobs like — I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many. I went to an interview several months ago, and once they learned about my conviction they looked at me like, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

JONES: After decades of hard-line policies on crime — tough justice — more and more communities are looking into what is called Justice Reinvestment.

Mr. CADORA: Let us take the investments that had been built up over the years from criminal justice, redirect them to investments in civil institutions in those neighborhoods — better schools, better health care, better mental health support, and so on. In many of the states where the Justice Reinvestment initiative has taken root, prison populations are either dropping or the trend line in growth has been radically reduced, and that’s from Connecticut to Kansas — liberal to conservative.

Matoka Belton

JONES: Most of the crimes are connected to violence, drugs, and alcohol. But researchers found another culprit for the increased prison populations.

Mr. CALDORA: We found states where 60 to 65 percent of everyone entering prison each year were entering as a result of a revocation of parole and probation.

JONES: That was the case in Kansas, so legislators passed a new law — a new direction —committing taxpayer dollars to cities and communities that change parole and probation regulations that’ll reduce the prison population by 20 percent.

Mr. CALDORA: That’s kind of what the reinvestment project is about. It’s about saying, “Look, if you can reduce it, we’ll give you the money to keep reducing it.”

JONES: According to Caldora, states are being forced to rethink their hard line throw-the-criminals-in-jail attitude because, especially in these hard economic times, the criminal justice system is too costly, both financially and psychologically.

Mr. CALDORA: They realize that this overwhelming overuse of criminal justice is one of the greatest threats to sort of civil society.

JONES: This threat to society, this impact on communities in prison, can be felt on the streets and inside the crowded housing projects. We met Matoka Belton. She didn’t want us to see her three children. Their father went to prison.

(to Ms. Belton): What was he in prison for?

MATOKA BELTON: A number of things, and it was due to survival.

JONES: What was impact on the children of him being away?

Mr. MATOKA: It’s hard because they’re like, you know, what “school” is this, because you try not to say he’s in prison. “What school is this that they don’t come home? College?” But then it comes to the point where they’re a certain age and you can’t lie anymore. I was once an inmate myself. I know what it was like for my children to feel like, “Wow, my mother’s not here. Why can’t mommy come home with us?” It’s hard to leave a visit.

JONES: It’s a cruel cycle — poverty, crime, prison — passed from one generation to the next. A child whose parent went to prison is likely to end up behind bars too.

Mr. MATTOS: When you look at a kid and you say, “How could that kid, you know, have done such a crime like that?” Because he was never really told that was something wrong to do. He never celebrated Christmas with the family or sat down at the dinner table with the family.

JONES: About 700,000 inmates come back home every year. Most are unprepared for re-entry, and their communities are unprepared for their return. As the US government is making huge investments in industries and businesses, it is now being forced to also address a broken justice system, a system in desperate need of a stimulus package of sorts — justice reinvestment.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Phil Jones in Brooklyn, New York.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a powerful story today about punishment for juveniles who commit crimes. The Supreme Court has thrown out the death penalty for such young people, but in 44 states they can still be sentenced to life in prison without parole.  Is that just for children – even for the worst crimes? Tim O’Brien reports from Tampa, Florida.

TIM O’BRIEN: Twenty-three-year-old Kenneth Young is serving life in prison with no possibility of parole for a series of hotel robberies in and around Tampa, Florida. It was June of 2000. Young had just turned 15 and was acting at the direction of 25-year-old Jacques Bethea, a neighborhood drug dealer with a long arrest record. Bethea would hold the gun. Young would take the money:

KENNETH YOUNG: The only thing he told me to do was get the money and the tapes, and that was it.

O’BRIEN: What tapes?

Mr. YOUNG: Like video tapes from the video cameras.

O’BRIEN: The security cameras?

Mr. YOUNG: Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN: And you did that?

Mr. YOUNG: Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN: Young says he had little choice. His mother was addicted to crack cocaine and had stolen drugs from Bethea. He believed her life was in danger.

Mr. YOUNG: He threatened to hurt my Momma.

O’BRIEN: What did he say he’d do?

Mr. YOUNG: Kill her.

Mr. YOUNG: Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN: Young’s mother, who says she’s been off drugs for more than three years, blames herself for the fix her son is in.

O’BRIEN: If you didn’t go along?

STEPHANIE YOUNG: Yes, I do, I do, because if it wasn’t for the drugs, me being on drugs, then my son wouldn’t be where he’s at today.

O’BRIEN: Young is being held at a maximum security prison in central Florida. Under Florida law, juveniles charged with serious crimes are tried as adults, and serious crimes — like armed robbery — can bring life in prison. And in the courtroom of Judge J. Rogers Padgett, being a child didn’t seem to help. It can even hurt the child who behaves like one, as Kenneth Young did.

Judge J. ROGERS PADGETT (Hillsborough County, Florida Circuit Court): So what we see is what we get in the way of a defendant. We get a person who shows no remorse. We get a person who is smiling in court, thinks it’s funny. We have a person who, while he is under consideration for a life sentence, is flipping signals to people in the gallery.

O’BRIEN: He’s only 15, barely.

Judge PADGETT: We have a person who gives no appearance of deserving any slack whatsoever and sentence him. So we give him a life sentence.

O’BRIEN: Enter law professor Paolo Annino, who runs the Children in Prison Project at Florida State University. Annino has been trying for years to get the Florida legislature to allow parole consideration for all juvenile offenders in the state to give them a second chance, his arguments as much moral as they are legal.

(to Prof. Paolo Annino): Is it your position that no juvenile should be sentenced to life without parole?

Professor PAOLO ANNINO (Florida State University): Oh, absolutely, and I think we’re immoral, ultimately, as a nation. This is no different from slavery or other major moral issues. Placing children in adult prisons for life is a death sentence for children. Do we want to do that as a society? Do we want to ignore our Western traditions? I mean, we do have Western traditions, and one part of our Western traditions is called redemption, and for many people in our culture redemption is an important value.

Judge PADGETT: There are some crimes that these people have committed that simply have no redemption. The victim and the public in general who know about the crime are looking for retribution.

O’BRIEN: It’s all about retribution.

Judge PADGETT: Retribution, right.

O’BRIEN: According to Human Rights Watch, the United States is the only country in the world that regularly sentences juvenile offenders to life in prison without parole. There are now more than 2,500. Pennsylvania has the most with 444. All but these six states allow life without parole for those under 18 at the time of their crimes.

Most of the crimes that bring life in prison without parole are far worse than Kenneth Young’s armed robberies. Most involved murder, often the murder of other children — crimes that shock the conscience and break the heart.

DAWN ROMIG (testifying): Good morning. My name is Dawn Romig.

O’BRIEN: In Pennsylvania, a Senate committee held hearings last October to consider doing away with life sentences for juvenile offenders. Lawmakers got an earful from opponents like Dawn Romig, whose 12-year-old daughter had been murdered by 17-year-old Brian Bahr.

Ms. ROMIG (testifying): We learned that Brian had made a list. It was called 23 things to do to a girl in the woods: “Beat her, check; rape her, check; kill her, check.” Everything on that list was carried out. It was an adult act he planned and executed. Why should these juveniles not get life in prison? Age cannot excuse what they have done.

JODI DOTTS (testifying): I never got to say goodbye to Kimmie. I never got to see her in a casket. I now talk to her at her grave still, 10 years later, on Mother’s Day. I’d also like to add, as I was sitting here listening to people saying they need second chances, my daughter didn’t have a second chance. She wasn’t given that choice whether to live or to die and I’m here to fight to make sure that these juveniles do not get released. Thank you.

O’BRIEN: What do you say to the parents of a child — whose child is murdered?

Prof. ANNINO: Well, it’s tragic and it’s very difficult, and I turn to a group that I’m associated with, and it’s called Mothers Against Murderers Association — and their children have been killed

O’BRIEN: MAMA Inc., a remarkable support group in West Palm Beach. Seventy-three women, all of whom have lost a child to murder, meet at this storefront office every other Thursday. The walls are lined with the photographs—the mother with her lost child.

On this day, Paula Bowe will be joining MAMA’s poignant photo gallery. Her daughter was shot to death by an ex-boyfriend—

PAULA BOWE: And he shot her. He shot her twice at point blank—once in the face, once in the neck.

O’BRIEN: What makes this association so remarkable is that, despite their grief, members do not seek retribution. Instead, they speak out against it.

ANGELA WILLIAMS (Founder, MAMA Inc): That’s one thing I tell my moms all the time: the only way they’re going to move on, they’re going to have to learn to forgive, you know, and if they don’t learn to forgive, then they’ll never be able to move on to the next step.

O’BRIEN: And Angela Williams should know.

Ms. WILLIAMS: I lost seven. I lost five nephews and two nieces in my family, and that motivates me to keep going to help others. Gun violence — all killed by guns.

O’BRIEN: MAMA is supporting Kenneth Young’s petition for clemency on the premise that any child should be given a second chance, even for murder.

O’BRIEN: Sylvia Manning is a preacher whose son was shot to death. She believes there’s hope for his killer, who has yet to be apprehended.

Reverend SYLVIA MANNING: I feel as though whoever did this to my son, they can be redeemed. I mean, if they know Jesus they can be redeemed.

O’BRIEN: It’s a religious issue to you?

Rev. MANNING: Not really religious. It’s what my heart says.

O’BRIEN: Linda Battle is a Palm Beach County deputy sheriff whose son Eric was run down and killed by a drug dealer.

LINDA BATTLE (Deputy Sheriff, Palm Beach County, FL): I worked in the jails, and I see the juveniles come in there for major crimes, and they’re just babies, and I don’t know what got them to that point.

O’BRIEN: What got them to that point? The U.S. Supreme Court, in rejecting the death penalty for juvenile offenders four years ago, relied in part on the growing body of psychiatric evidence that shows why children often fail to act as responsibly as adults,

Dr. RICHARD RATNER (American Psychiatric Association): In a nutshell, it is that the brain has not really matured. You do not really have an adult brain until you are in your early 20s.

O’BRIEN: You have actual, empirical evidence of that?

Dr. RATNER: We do.

O’BRIEN: Ratner says that magnetic resonance imaging — MRIs like this one — show that juveniles use a different part of the brain in the decision-making process than adults, making them more likely to act irrationally, less likely to appreciate the consequences of what they do.

Roughly 25 percent of the juvenile offenders serving life with no parole for murder never murdered anyone; rather, they were following the lead of an older adult. But under what’s known in the law as the felony murder rule, they are just as guilty as those who pull the trigger and often sentenced just as harshly.

Prof. ANNINO: They follow these older adults, and then the adults commit a murder. So the kid never has the gun in his hand. The kid never touches the gun. Many times—

O’BRIEN: But he’s still charged with murder?

Prof. ANNINO: He is charged with murder and gets the exact same sentence.

O’BRIEN: An accessory is as guilty as the principal?

Prof. ANNINO: In the state of Florida it is exactly the same, and that’s the felony murder rule, and we have it not just in Florida, but around the country, and the felony murder rules denies the individuality of the child. It ignores the fact that you have a child here, and you’re treating the child just like an adult.

O’BRIEN: Among those who have problems with that, we were surprised to find the judge who had sentenced Kenneth Young to four consecutive life terms. Judge J. Rogers Padgett said judges have no way of knowing what might become of the children who appear before them and, at least where the victim doesn’t die, their fate should be left to the Department of Corrections.

Judge PADGETT: If I went and talked to Kenneth, I might have sympathy, too, because I firmly believe the Department of Corrections ought to be given the latitude to determine when these people are ready to go. What do I know? At the time of sentencing, I’m doing a snapshot. So what do I know?

O’BRIEN: But in Florida, as in most states, it’s too late to turn back the clock. Even the sentencing judge cannot reopen this case decided more than seven years ago.

Ms. YOUNG: It’s hard. It’s so hard — the sleepless nights that I have had. And every time I go to see my child, and I have to leave that prison without my baby, it just takes something out of me. It hurts. It hurts so bad.

O’BRIEN: Unless Florida changes its law, or the governor commutes the sentence, Kenneth Young will die in prison. He will never get out.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Tim O’Brien in Tampa, Florida.