A Teenage Nightmare. (Stick Up Kid Documentary).
Cole Montgomery
CRIM -410
Professor Engstrom
October 2, 2020
A Teenage Nightmare (Stickup Kid Documentary).
The documentary, Stickup kid is extremely significant and sad. The Documentary was produced by Caitlin McNally of PBS Frontline, and was released on December 17, 2020. The heartbreaking story depicts the life of a juvenile male, Alonza Thomas, who served thirteen years in prison for armed robbery of a Fast Trip gas station. The story behind this robbery is very interesting. Just days before this incident Alonza had ran away from his mother and his home. He met someone who offered to house him for a few days. This unidentified person fed Alonza and took care of him as well. As Alonza was ready to return back home just a few days after running away, the man who housed him threatened him at gunpoint. Alonza explains how this man forced him to rob the gas station, and told him that if he did this he would receive some of the robbery money from him. Feeling helpless, Alonza decided to rob the store. He ultimately failed and was taken down by the store clerks and was pinned down until the police came. Just two weeks earlier, California passed a law making it easier to prosecute juveniles as adults. Alonza’s case was the first case to be tried under this law, and ultimately he was sentenced to thirteen years in Adult Prison, Supermax Prison is Tehachapi California.
While viewing this article, I couldn’t help but feel completely sorry for Alonza. Throughout our CRIM -410 course we have talked about how social status correlates with criminalization. This applies to Alonza, because he was extremely poor. His mother was working two jobs and was hardly home. Earlier in the semester, I learned from The PBS race timeline for Whites, that “today the average white family has eight times more the wealth of the average nonwhite family.” Having low socioeconomic status, and coming from a poor African American family definitely helped contribute to Alonza being in the situation that he was in. While doing research this topic on the internet, I found that researchers have concluded that “the higher rates of crime found amongst young people from socio-economically disadvantaged families reflect a life course process in which adverse family, individual, school, and peer factors combine to increase individual susceptibility to crime.” (Ferguson et al. 2004). In Alonza’s case he was terrified and pressured into committing this crime by a criminal who attempted to take advantage of the young and developmentally delayed Alonza Thomas.
I believe that Alonza should not have been sent to Adult Prison for this crime. He was charged with three counts of robbery in the second degree, one count for each person in the store at the time, the owner and two clerks, and one count of assault with a firearm. The prosecutor in this case, Ed Jagels seemed far too harsh, and in my opinion, he may have had implicit bias towards Alonza. Just recently in class, we took implicit bias tests, and did one of our class prep assignments on this. Many people have unconscious implicit biases towards other races different from their own. I feel that prosecutors should take into account all of the different situations surrounding each crime. I believe that Alonza was used as an example being that he was the first juvenile locked up in adult prison under proposition twenty-one in California, and that he was pressured into committing this crime as noted earlier.
Alonza was not a threat to society and should have been tried as a juvenile. In class we learned about decarceration. This can be defined as “The reinvestment of the savings from fewer people incarcerated, into education, jobs, affordable housing, community strengthening, and everything/anything else that plugs the pipeline to prison. Decarceation ends poverty instead of criminalizing the poor.” (Edelman, 2017, p.158). Given that Alonza was pressured and threatened into committing this crime, him and his poor family definitely could have greatly benefitted from this.
What I concluded from this documentary, was the fact that Alonza did not belong in Adult Prison. California has since changed its rules regarding sentencing juveniles to Adult Prison, and over the past nine years twenty-four states have [assed laws to limit the placement of juveniles in adult jails and prisons. Prison is supposed to rehabilitate people while also punishing people for the crimes that they have committed. This does not apply to Alonza. He was scared for life for the unimaginable thirteen years that he served in Adult Prison. As a result of being sent to prison, Alonza developed chronic depression and anxiety, and is currently on multiple medications to get him through the day. He is far from rehabilitated in my opinion, and if he was sent to juvenile prison I believe he would have been far better off both mentally and physically.
Overall, this was a dense documentary filled with plenty of information about the process. I found it very tragic and terrible that this young man’s teenage and early adult years were filled with fear, depression, and frustration. I really do hope that Alonza enjoys the rest of his life without fear and pain. In conclusion, Stickup Kid was very significant and was truly eye-opening to me, and I would definitely recommend this documentary to anyone.
References
Fergusson, D., Swain-Campbell, N., & Horwood, J. (2004). How does childhood economic disadvantage lead to crime? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45(5), 956–966
Edelman, P. B. (2019). Not a crime to be poor: The criminalization of poverty in America. The New Press.
Stickup Kid. (n.d.). FRONTLINE. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/stickup-kid/