Black Prisoners Caucus Summit 2006
Monroe, Washington
You are cordially invited to click on the link to hear Kimonti Carter speak at the Black Prisoners Caucus Summit 2006.
Pretty powerful. Fourteen and fifteen year olds sentenced to prison for life because they committed a heinous crime.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not condoning nor making excuses for these kids. Filling up the prison system with children doesn’t make our society safer. But, it is easier to just get them off the streets and out of the way; you know, out of sight, out of mind. Never mind what the kid is experiencing.
Kimonti tells his own story. Not to get sympathy or get his sentence shortened but to help stop the flow of young, nonwhite men into prison. Kimonti became a gang member at age 11. By age 16 he had a record that included burglary, robbery, theft of a motor vehicle, possession of narcotics, and escape. He points out that his “history is the life of kids in our communities. My reality will be their future if we don’t create better ways of dealing with our children.”
Kimonti reminds us that the need for survival and basic needs overrides the need to go to school to learn English and math. (Think Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs here, it’s not rocket science.) The playing field is not level. There is a huge gap in resources available to children in impoverished inner city communities that resemble third world countries. The criminal justice system punishes without offering alternatives. Kids learn about the consequence but don’t learn what they can do differently.
Kimonti is asking society to distinguish between children faced with a new situation making a wrong decision in the heat of the moment and men who are a serious danger to society. In the best conditions, with lots of resources, good educational opportunities, a stable family life, teenagers still get into trouble as they deal with the physical and emotional changes in their bodies. Without changes to the system, these children who could be rehabilitated with appropriate resources will end up dangerous members of society.
There’s another young black man who will probably be joining Kimonti soon. He made a bad decision in a busy shopping mall a few weeks ago. Is he guilty? Newspaper reports sound like there’s substantial circumstantial evidence and eye-witnesses. Grandma says he’s a good kid and doesn’t belong to a gang. His brother says it was self-defense.
What will happen in the courtroom?
