Imagine that you are 15 years old.  Your father has beaten you since you were 3 years old.  Your mother is too scared to stop him, when she is sober that is.  One night, you come home from school to find your mother wasted and your father ready to unload his wrath on you…and you snap.  You grab a knife from the kitchen and fight back.  A few hours later, you find yourself in jail.  Then you discover you are being charged as an adult, because of the “heinous nature of your crime.”  A few months after that, you find yourself, still 15, put in a prison full of full grown men, all eager to pick up where your dad left off.

This sick scenario plays out far to often in America, and Colorado seems to have more than its fair share of Direct File kids.  As if the above chain of events were not bad enough, in order to “protect you,” as you live out your teen years in adult prison, the State has decreed that you are to be kept in “administrative” confinement.  A lovely euphemism for solitary confinement: you are kept alone in a concrete cell for 23 hours a day.

How would this effect you?  Would you be able to maintain your sanity?  The odds of that are slim to none.  Thanks to the Reverend Bonnie Young, you can click on this link to see what the effects of this “Administrative Confinement” are.  Additionally, a Harvard Researcher, Dr. Stuart Grassian, gives his insight into the backwardness of this system in an interview he did with David Sirota.  Click podcast to hear it.

Bottom line: this barbaric practice is making Colorado less safe, making criminals worse, and twisting the idea of justice into the sickening visage of revenge and torture.