Pushing uphill to keep teens from landing in adult prisons

Jason Sole headed to Minneapolis' Seward neighborhood in January, hoping the horrific news he'd just heard was wrong. But three men had, in fact, been killed in a Somali convenience store, and one of them, customer Anwar Mohammed, was a man Sole knew well.

"He was really, genuinely, a good guy," Sole said of Mohammed, 31, who worked as a parking lot attendant.

As the story unfolded, Sole was in a tough position. The alleged shooter was Mahdi Ali, believed to have been born in a Kenyan refugee camp. Two weeks ago, a judge ruled that Ali was at least 16 when he allegedly pulled the trigger on all three men, a decision that means Ali can be tried as an adult. If convicted of first-degree murder, the teen can be locked up for life with no possibility of parole. That's the tough part for Sole.

A three-time felon who spent two years in prison himself, Sole cleaned up his act and now runs a consulting firm working, in large part, to turn around juvenile offenders. That includes advocating to keep those younger than 18 out of adult prisons -- in all cases.

What Ali is accused of is horrible, Sole said, "but try him as a juvenile, because that's what he is. We didn't treat him like an adult before the crime. Why after?"

It's a question more people are asking, with good reason. "Study after study, including from the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Brookings Institution, has found that kids put into the adult system are more likely to reoffend than similar kids kept in the juvenile system," said Eric Solomon, spokesman for the Campaign for Youth Justice based in Washington. They are also 36 times more likely to commit suicide in adult jails than are youth housed in juvenile facilities, he said.

Last Thursday, representatives from Solomon's organization testified at a hearing in Washington to support juvenile justice reform. "Kids should be held accountable, but keeping them with adults is not helping anybody," Solomon said. "It's just putting our kids in danger and costing the government more money."

So what does work?

On the front end, at-risk youth need positive role models and mentors, educational opportunities and "meaningful field trips" to colleges and businesses, and not just prisons, Sole said, "to show youth all the possibilities of their life."

Parent education is essential, too. Russel Balenger is the director of adult transition services and community engagement at Amicus, a nonprofit that helps prisoners and ex-offenders. Balenger has followed the Ali case and wondered, "Did he have a father in the home? One of the things I always think about is, how can you be a man if you haven't seen one?"

In February, Balenger started "Peace Circles" in St. Paul, bringing together parents, grandparents and other engaged adults to break the cycle of violence plaguing their children.

"These adults felt like they were being treated like criminals," Balenger said. "They hated the police, and they all said they didn't want to go to any more funerals." After four or five sessions, "some admitted that, maybe we need to parent better, maybe we are causing problems for the police. A new sense of community was created. The kids knew something was up."

Minnesota also is a national leader in restorative justice, which forces offenders to internalize the devastating impact their violence has on victims and victims' families. Every dollar spent on restorative justice may save $8 in the criminal justice system, according to the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania.

More important, it's a potentially powerful way out of the morass.

"I wholeheartedly believe that any man at any age can change," said Mark, speaking to me Friday from a medium-security facility and asking that his last name not be used. Mark is 23 years into a life sentence for a murder he committed at age 24.

"Guys who want to change are guys who truly understand what they've done, who have empathy," he said. "We can't predict who can be rehabilitated, but we can assume that everybody can, including a young offender. Nobody gave up on me, so I'm not giving up on anybody else."

Sole won't either. "I know that it's going to be necessary for him to do some time for this," if convicted, Sole said of Ali. "We have to have compassion for the families of those killed.