Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Crime in the Media Fall 2020

The documentary I chose to watch was called Stickup Kid. This documentary was about a 16-year-old African American boy who was sent to an adult supermax prison. When 16-year-old Alonza Thomas was angry at his mother one day, he decided he wanted to run away. He met someone and stayed with him for a few days, he fed Alonza and took him in. After a couple days Alonza decided he wanted to go back home, upon saying this the guy that he was staying with pulled a gun out and held it at Alonza saying how nothing is free and he can’t stay there and get fed for free. The guy told Alonza that he was going to rob a store for him to pay him back. With Alonza being young and easily influenced he did not have much of a choice. Alonza went to a gas station and pointed a gun at the store clerk telling him to empty the drawer, when his gun accidentally went off Alonza realized exactly what he was doing and began to run away. The clerks then tackled Alonza, beat him up and held him at gun point until the cops arrived. Alonza was charged as an adult, with three counts of armed robbery, one count for each store clerk, each of these counts carried a possible sentence of thirteen years. In the documentary they mentioned how robbery with a firearm was considered the most dangerous crime there is besides homicide itself. Alonza pleaded guilty to one count of armed robbery, and he was sentenced to thirteen years in Tehachapi California, supermax prison.

California has been known to lock up more juveniles per capita, than any other state. Two weeks before Alonza committed the crime, California passed a law making it easier to prosecute juveniles as adults, because of the nationwide trend and the fear of “super-predators” which we discussed in class, and how wrong this theory actually was. “America is now home to thickening ranks of juvenile ‘super-predators’- radically impulsive, brutally remorseless youngsters, including ever more preteen boys who murder, assault, rape, rob, burglarize, deal deadly drugs and create serious communal disorders” (Henning, 2017). This fear of juveniles being extremely violent gained significant traction in the media and soon everyone was scared of what juveniles were going to do. Because of this a sixteen-year-old boy was able to be charged as an adult stay in a supermax prison for thirteen years, despite the fact that Alonza knew what he did was wrong and was remorseful and clearly not the violent criminal or super-predator the world was so scared of. “Dilulio predicted that ‘not only is the number of young black criminals likely to surge, but…as many as half of these juvenile super-predators could be young black males’” (Henning, 2017). I believe that his race played a huge part in why he was prosecuted as an adult, and the fact that had the term super-predator and half of them being black males not been in peoples head, I think Alonza would not have been in an adult supermax prison and ruined his life. Obviously being so young in an adult prison has many detrimental effects, Alonza was included in this. While he was in prison he was treated for anxiety and depression, he spent most of his prison time in mental health treatment or solitary confinement. “African American prisoners make up 49 percent of the prison population but constitute 59 percent of those in solitary confinement” (Travis and Western, 2017). The way the system encourages young people to cope is by putting them into solitary for protection, once in there, things tend to spiral out of control, Alonza was no exception to this. In solitary confinement he was in his cell for 23 hours a day, having conversations with people who were not there and attempted suicide multiple times. Once he was finally released from prison and back with his family, his younger brother noticed that Alonza was not okay, he had to take multiple medications including anti-depressants, anti-psychotics and medication for anxiety. He frequently posted on his Facebook account, trying to help other people out there, he felt this was important and that he had to do this, because he does not have any help of his own. It is obviously that Alonza’s life was severely impacted and he is worse off now than he would have been had he not gone to prison.

This documentary helped me see how bad the super-predator theory had influenced some children’s lives, as well as the racial disparity that comes from this and how detrimental prison like that can be for young children. I think it is important to understand the consequences of predicting something so extreme with no real basis of it, and how it changes people’s lives. Saying that young black males will be half of the problem puts an enormous stigma on these children and makes them believe that they are criminals and they are dangerous and for people like Alonza, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, it is not true. I would recommend this to others so people can see what happens when we place young people into adult prisons and what that does to their health and how it impacts them for the rest of their lives.

Citations

Henning, K. (2017) Boys to Men: The Role of Policing in the Socialization of Black Boys. In A.J. Davis, Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment. Vintage books

Travis, J and Western, B. (2017) Poverty, Violence, and Black incarceration. In A.J. Davis, Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment. Vintage books

Documentary Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0xmAA6lPhU&t=1s

anonymous