SB 9, The Fair Sentencing for Youth Act, Likely to Come to a Vote This Week

The California senate will likely vote this week on SB 9. which would give kids who were sentenced to Life Without the Possibility of Parole in California as juveniles, a chance to have their sentence reviewed after they have served at least 10 years.

The fact that this bill didn’t pass last time it was introduced may be laid at the feet of democratic lawmakers, many of them liberals, who did not want to risk being labeled soft on crime.

Let’s hope that this time around these same legislators grow some backbone.

Here’s some background on the bill in its last incarnation.

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THE SANTO MADE ME DO IT

The talented journalist Sam Slovick has an ongoing series in the LA Weekly called PAVEMENT, in which he finds and profiles different people, places and issues, from the pavement up.

This week’s is particularly good as he profiles a kid named Carlos, about whom Slovick writes, “Carlos is going to prison. He’s always been going to prison. Whether it’s this time or the next, his future is preordained. The circumstances of his life crushed him into a brown diamond that fits perfectly into a cell.”

The video above is about Carlos.

Also check out Slovick’s related Huffington Post column titled “Addicted to Incarceration.”