The Jeopardy Answer is … 2,225
And the question is:
How many children are in prison for life without the possibility of parole in the US?
A truly remarkable number… and there are only two countries that have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of Children – the US and Somalia. This and other unsettling data was published by Amnesty International’s Human Rights Watch in their 2005 report, The Rest of Their Lives.
Somalia - there is something dreadfully wrong about being in such company. There is also something dreadfully wrong about the lack of imagination that seems so prevalent in our culture today, the lack of imagining the possibility that these young offenders could ever rejoin society.
Other cultures have figured out ways to reconcile reprehensible acts of children, and have found ways to reconnect them to families and villages. What is it about our society that creates such insurmountable chasms, and the impossibility of reconciliation?
What is it costing us? If we consider some of our children irredeemable, where is our redemption?