Last December, I posted on the plight of a teenage boy from southern Maine, incarcerated in federal prison for the crime of incinerating the engine of Poppa Bush's yacht, while attempting to coverup his break-in to a local boatyard. The boy, previously identified only as Patrick (the NYTimes has now published the minor's full name) was sent to a federal facility in Pennsylvania, hundreds of miles from his family. A federal court judge in Portland has now reopened the case, to determine if the original sentencing justice acted illegally in shipping the juvenile arsonist off to the wilds of Penn's Woods.
Locally, the case has stirred some resentment, in a region which has generally given the former President a pass for siring the current miscreant to occupy the Oval Office. Even the conservative Portland Press Herald, which ignored the story when the boatyard fire first occurred, reported on the apparent injustice of Patrick's placement, and the link to Bush Sr.'s beloved boat. Not a good sign for the first family of Kennebunkport.
While I'm very pleased to see a possible light at the end of the tunnel for young Patrick, the press has missed another important aspect of this story. Patrick may have been the only New Englander housed in the federal juvenile facility, now known for its lack of appropriate educational and rehabilitative services, but he wasn't the only teenager kept hundreds of miles from community and family. The majority of Patrick's prison-mates are Indians, having committed their crimes on "federal" property, i.e., reservation lands. They too are lost in what the New York Times deemed a "legal black hole".
But while Patrick has the benefit of being a middle-class white kid from Kennebunkport who torched Bush property, thus conveying some media "sex appeal" to the story, the teenagers from the rez have no such luck. They remain trapped in a system which was never meant to exist, not even registering on the media's radar.
Posted by MB Williams at March 29, 2004 07:16 AM | TrackBack