> Before his arrest, Michael did not have a criminal record. That day, he gained one with a vengeance. For the watch and the wallet, Michael was charged with robbery; for the car, attempted carjacking. Both charges were “enhanced” because of the gun. He was also charged with the two earlier robberies. Four felonies, two from one incident, and all in one week.

The tone here confuses me. Robbing somebody at gunpoint certainly seems felony-worthy.

Yeah it does seem like the system worked pretty well in this case, in so far as you want to see a rapid escalation of charges in response to violent or potentially violent crimes. Brandishing a firearm in any context is very serious, and when you're downright using it to intimidate and rob people when you've committed an act which not infrequently leads to death or at least serious injury. Worse you are using that for the violence and you know it, so this guy is about as far from the victim as possible.

By contrast the kid who was shot after allegedly robbing someone in a convenience store without a weapon was a very very different story. There are many issues with how the system treats minorities especially black people, and poor people in general, but this article doesn't seem like it's describing one of them.

I think it's a stretch to say the system worked well in this case. Even if you accept the charges and sentencing, the correctional system clearly fails in its goal of rehabilitation.

Michael (the subject of the article) has only limited access to books, while in prison. education is shown to reduce recidivism, but Michael is limited to courses that don't require hardcover books. (Not many courses, in my experience.)

Few employers will seriously consider felons for jobs, and it is hard not to see this as a contributing factor to his recidivism and death.

I don't think the system worked here, very well, at all.

How much can one reasonably expect of the system though? The young man in the article walked out of prison to a job, a co-signed apartment, and a college admission* -- and he still threw his life away. Is there no point where his failure to coexist with society is his own responsibility?

*Not that the system gave these things to him, but clearly it wouldn't have mattered if they had.

> The tone here confuses me. Robbing somebody at gunpoint certainly seems felony-worthy.

It is. But the point is that he went from "zero" to "three strikes life sentence" in a single shot. It is not clear that this is what the law was actually supposed to do. Certainly, I personally would never have expected that a single incident could invoke a "three strikes" law.

However, involving a gun breaks most of my sympathy. It is difficult for me to envision what a "proper sentence" should be when the victim could have wound up dead.

There were 3 incidents on police record.

the tone is consistent throughout the article. The author is reflecting on the tragedy of his cousin's life, so the tone is searching and tragic.

Not a lot separates the experiences of the two cousins, at least at first. By the time of his cousins' conviction and release, there is a much wider gulf.

So the tone is tragic-- that seems justified. Isn't this a tragedy?

It's not the implication of tragedy, it's this:

> They were designing sentences not for people but for a thing: the aggregate level of crime. They wanted to reduce that level, regardless of what constituted justice for any individual involved. The target of Michael’s sentence was not a bright fifteen-year-old boy with a mild proclivity for theft but the thousands of carjackings that occurred in Los Angeles.

I guess it's just the overall tone that Michael is a victim of circumstances and the light treatment of the underlying fact that he paid for the consequences of his own actions.

i agree that the author does himself a disservice by assiduously minimizing Michael's crimes.

But I think it makes sense to see Michael as a victim of circumstance, to a certain extent. We can do something about those circumstances.

Agreed on the minimization. Michael instigated an armed hold up and was shot in the struggle when the victim grabbed for the weapon. Luckily Smith, the victim, did not kill Michael. Luckily Michael did not kill Smith.

I read the article. He robbed 4 people, with a handgun. The robbery for which he got caught he tapped a person with a gun and waved it around, demanding more and more.

"Then Michael asked for his wallet. When he found that it was empty, he tossed it back into the car. Then, as the police report recounted, Michael “tapped Smith’s left knee with the gun and said he was going to take the car.” "

It's misleading to classify this--as the relatives do--as an "attempted car jacking". It's not like he said "give me your car", got a no answer, and walked away. This was an armed robbery.

His family seems angry at the "white" neighbors who called the police and when he robbed them as a youth. But it's early interventions like this that _should_ have served as a warning sign to his family. It didn't. They're just angry that someone would dare call the police for an $11 robbery.

TL but definitely read; despite multiple warning signs and chances and an extended attempt to intervene by loving family members, an individual with a bad early family situation ends up dead as a consequence of only his own adult decisions.

Jesus Christ, what a story.