it s a surreal landscape. inmates like robert who has been in the juvenile system all his life, his dad killed in front of him, seven family members behind bars. kids like paul gingerich, never in trouble with the law, suddenly locked up at age 12. now serving 25 years in prison. you can t spend time with these kids and not ask the question where did it all go wrong. growing up, i never really realized the path that i was headed. like it s not that i couldn t have seen it. i just never took the time out. it really it didn t hit me until the judge sentenced me to 36 years.
it s extremely sensitive and crucial that you think for yourself and you do what you think is right and not what you think someone else wants you to do, that you know within yourself is wrong. while stanley and rankin face new challenges in their adult cell block, 12-year-old paul gingerich has similar issue, even in the juvenile system. the difficulty is just keeping him safe. typically kids are much larger, and they re the type of kids who like to mess or pick on the smaller kids. it is difficult. he is an easy target, even in a juvenile facility. do you think about wabash at all and what that is like? try not to. i don t know what i ll be expecting when i go down there. for now wabash will remain a mystery to paul gingerich. but for others like robert, it s
nicole gingerich hope to keep paul in a youth facility with programs geared towards his age and developmental needs. but as it stands now, paul will transition to wabash as soon as officials feel he has matured enough to make the move. i think that he should be held accountable for the part that he had in this. and i would suggest counseling, therapy, and programs to help him. mike dempsey has other reasons for wanting to keep paul in the juvenile system. the fact is you can t put a 12-year-old child in that type of environment and expect them to have half a chance. you just can t do it. i think that there are probably some adult offenders who sincerely want to try to do the right thing and help, yet there is a lot of predators out there as well, who will eat the weakness up. they can get into trouble very quickly. serious trouble.
it s hard to imagine someone that age being in that position. had you ever been in juvenile? no. this was my first time. gingerich s age and lack of criminal record caught the attention of monica foster, an indianapolis attorney who has taken on his case pro bono. she is appealing paul s adult sentencing and fighting to keep him in a juvenile facility. he has never had a juvenile referral. never a juvenile referral. i ve never heard of such a thing. 12 years old, we re going to treat him like an adult with zero juvenile referrals. to treat a 12-year-old as an adult is for the system to say we give up on you. there is nothing that we can do to rehabilitate you. and to me that is selling the justice system so far short. and it is selling a kid like paul so amazingly short. it s just ridiculous. monica and paul s mother,
i was kind of, like, scared, because i didn t know where i was where my body was going to be and everything. 12-year-old paul gingerich is one of the youngest kids in indiana history to be sentenced as an adult. paul was a friend of colt lundy when the two boys fired four shots, killing colt s stepdad in his northern indiana home. paul was sentenced to 25 years in the wabash youth unit, but due to his age and size, officials made a bold decision and placed the seventh grader at pendleton juvenile facility, a maximum security prison which only houses juveniles. he s not our first murderer here, but he is not the typical thing that you would see. you just saw the paper and you would expect a much larger, scary kid. and that s just not the case with him. he is kind of a little guy, even for his age i think he is a little guy.