Inappropriate sentencing

In my volunteer work teaching meditation and Buddhism in prisons I’ve on some occasions come across people I’ve thought shouldn’t have been in prison at all. Once case was an 18-year-old man who had been imprisoned as a sex-offender for having sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend. Readers in the UK (where I come from) will at this point be scratching their heads, because in that country the age of consent is 16. In New Hampshire, and in many other states, it’s 18.

Neither this young man nor his girlfriend was even aware that the age of consent in New Hampshire was 18, and that they were breaking the law. Nevertheless he ended up in prison, branded as a sex offender, very vulnerable to sexual and physical abuse himself by other inmates, forced to register as a sex-offender, and stigmatized for the rest of his life.

I just read about a similar case in the New York Times today (Free Genarlow Wilson), where a young man of 17 — himself a minor — was imprisoned in Georgia for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl. That was, arguably, a very foolish act, but it doesn’t make Mr. Wilson a child-molester, and it’s absurd that he’s being treated as such and that he will spend at least the next ten years of his life in prison.

This kind of ruling does nothing to promote respect for the law, and it’s deeply concerning that a young man should have his life ruined for an act committed while a minor, and an act, moreover that has since been downgraded to a misdemeanor that does not require registration as a sex offender. It’s absurd that Genarlow Wilson is serving a long sentence for something that is no longer even considered a serious offense, and I congratulate the New York Times for highlighting his case.

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