In 2013, a 14-year-old teen was arrested for killing his high school math teacher. Today, he is 17 and yesterday a court sentenced him to more than 40 years in prison. He did not just kill the teacher, but he also raped and robbed her. During the sentence hearing at a Massachusetts court room, he stood hand-cuffed and he had on an expressionless face; there is no sigh of remorse, guilt, anger, and sadness on him. He looks like a lifeless person standing in the court but he is there, still breathing and can still function like any healthy human. The victim's family was present in the court and as they listened to the sentence made by the judge, the victim's mother described the killer as "pure evil, and evil can never be rehabilitated."
No one can fully understand the full anger and resentment the victim's family has toward the perpetrator. One thing that crossed my mind as I read the whole story of this 17-year-old is what a wasted life he has. The perpetrator was only 14 when he committed the crime. The world needs people to make a difference and he could have been one of them. A person lives on average 70 to 80 years on this earth and those years outside of imprisonment could have been spent doing something great. He could have invent the next technology that would cure cancers or the next invisible cloak for the military in fighting zones. But instead, this 17-year-old will have to spend the next 40 years of his life in a dark room behind bars.
As a social service worker, I have had clients who were jailed for numerous reasons--murdering, white collar crimes, robbery, arsenal, etc. and many of them saw their time behind bars as something they wish they did not have to go through. They do not want another person to be in the same shoe as them and they hope no one will eventually. We have one life and we have to make good use of it. Committing an act and then getting jailed for decades is a wasted life and it is a life we should never be in. We all have the brain and the imagination to do something great in life and we have to make most of it.
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