youth offenders. most of the kids we get in our juvenile system are going to be here for six to 12 months tops. so i think that takes on a different dynamic when you have somebody like paul who is 12 years old who already knows, recognizes the fact that he is essentially going to have to grow up, go through puberty and adolescence in a correctional facility. i have to say that in those particular cases, the juvenile facility is the one best prepared to help him through that type of growth. it s for precisely these reasons that paul and his lawyer, monica foster, continue to fight to keep him in the juvenile system. we re trying to go to indiana supreme court to get appeals so i can get waived down to juvenile again, help me change my sentence. sentenced as an adult, but held at pendleton juvenile, paul is stuck in a type of legal limbo. this is the first kid we ve ever had who is a legal adult in a juvenile facility. so we re learning as we go, because we ve never had to deal
lundy is serving a 30-year sentence after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit murder in the shooting death of his stepdad. like afterwards, i couldn t even believe myself like what happened. how could i possibly be in this situation? you know, i went from a s and b s students to in jail. i didn t even know what to think at the time. every day i just think if i just would have, you know, like just done one thing different. i mean it s a waste of time to do that because you can t. once it s done, it s done. there is no going back. lundy s 12-year-old friend paul gingerich was sentenced to 25 years in wabash for his crime. but due to his age and size, department of correction officials placed him in pendleton juvenile correctional facility, which only houses youth offenders. most of the kids we get in our juvenile system are going to be here for six to 12 months
you have to follow instructions. you don t follow instructions, when you get released, you will come right back in here. as a matter of fact, you re 18 19. 19? you will be across the street to adult. i ain t coming back. but if you don t start following instructions, you will. contract with me that you won t self-harm yourself anymore, okay? did you learn something from this experience? follow instruction? yeah. follow instructions. always keeps you out of trouble. with over 300 teens behind bars, the challenges inside a maximum security juvenile facility can run the gamut. one challenge is the sheer energy level it takes to manage the day. when we gets kids in our system, it s usually the end result of phenomenal interventions, but the young men and women i have in our juvenile system today are
in our juvenile system today are here because they have threatened the fabric of public safety. it was a different set of problems that landed 18-year-old adam cameron in pendleton. my biggest problem in life is just stealing things, touching things that don t belong to me. grand theft auto. stolen stuff. it started when i met a girl when i was 13. then i started running away, got in a gang, and went on from there. the gang had me do things. if you want to actually put your chairs in a circle, i d appreciate it. cameron never thought his sticky fingers would lead to time in juvenile prison. he s had two long years to think about his past. it s not his trouble-making days he talks about the most. my dad, he could walk through the door right now and i wouldn t have any idea that was him. and my mom, she tries to be there for me, but she really doesn t.
can do that, you can put a 10-year-old in adult court, in this itcase, put two 12-year-ol in adult court? the juvenile system is a bit of a paradox. we say if you re under a certain age or a juvenile, you re not as responsible for a crime. unless you do something really, really bad. and then in that case, we re going to call you an adult. so steal something from a store, we ll call you a juvenile. try to kill someone, oh, no, no, that s so bad, we re going to ignore the neuro science. the neuro science is increasingly teaching us, the supreme court is starting to recognize, what we ve known for millennia, and that s that kids say and do the darnedest things. they simply don t have now science is starting to back up they don t have the same synaptic ability to understand the nature and consequences of what they re doing. so we need to resolve our juvenile system. can i just add to this, when we had our discussion about this