Minor Offenses, by Arthur Tebbel & Chris Toia – Pop Art… and Chris #49

November 10, 2009 Arthur Tebbel & Chris Toia 2 Comments

Dear Art & Chris,
This week we here at The Supreme Court are hearing arguments about whether it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment to sentence a minor to life without the possibility of parole for crimes other than murder. There are 109 people in the world in such circumstances and all of them are in this country. Almost three-fourths of them are in Florida. As per usual I am asking you guys for advice on this serious issue facing the court. Also as per usual I will not take your advice.
-John Roberts, Chief Justice, United States Supreme Court

John,
I would address the entire issue of life without parole. Isn’t it essentially a death sentence that takes decades accompanied by years of violence and rape? That sounds pretty cruel and unusual to us. We’ve come up with some less cruel punishments. Having your TV set equipped with chip that only lets the inhabitant watch CSPAN. Having to drive only cars made by Chrysler/Dodge. Making sure that every meal you eat costs more than 15 dollars at a fast food restaurant (try having the will to commit a crime on that diet). Only being able to have sex if it was with a condom laced on the inside (outside for female criminals) laced with the juice of habanero peppers.

It’s interesting that so many of these people were convicted in Florida. It was thought that youth crime would deter tourism leading to stricter laws punishing minors. In case you haven’t added this all up they decided to but 13 year-olds away for the rest their lives with no chance of parole so that people might not stop going to Disney World. We did some projections here at Pop Art & Chris and we can say that without those laws Disney World would be overrun with crime right now. Think less like Orlando and more like Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome crossed with Scarface. Or about what Universal Studios is like now.

Florida of course has a high population of elderly residents so you might be surprised at the crimes that some of these people have committed. Sam Zurofsky is serving life without parole for getting his ball stuck in a yard twice. Nick Franklin has been in jail since he was 14 for listening to rap music in public. Daniel Honigman was sentenced to life for rolling his eyes at a story that took less than 20 minutes to tell. It’s an insane state run as a geriarchy as the old rule as tyrant kings.

Youth psychologists and correction officers have both argued against this policy claiming that things like group homes can be effective in changing behavior at this stage of development. It’s incredibly pessimistic to think that there are children that are unfixable and we’re the only country that holds that view. People change dramatically in their teens and early adulthood and we should try and use that opportunity to mold them into productive members of society rather than locking them up and throwing away the key. We couldn’t find out if any of these prisoners are in for drug-related offenses but know that we would think that was extra-retarded.