Lily Lamb

Professor Sene
Introduction to Anthropology
14 September 2021

Paper 1: Webs of Significance and Juvenile Lifers

Adam Liptak’s article, “Lifers as Teenagers, Now Seeking Second Chance” was the first

article in a series which intended to draw attention to unique—and sometimes questionable—

aspects of the American justice system which the public largely took for granted. This particular

article took on the phenomena of teenagers sentenced to life in prison; of whom there are 73

across America, and 19 in Pennsylvania alone. This number is especially shocking as all other 18

states with teenage lifers (apart from Florida) have less than 6 cases each. The large number of

teenage lifers in Pennsylvania is the product of a particular socio-political climate during the

1980s wherein life sentences became “politically popular” amongst the public at the same time

as laws were being passed to trial juvenile perpetrators as adults when their crimes were

particularly heinous (Keppler).

Liptak explored the complexities of the cases of juvenile lifers by examining one case in

particular—that of Ashley Jones, a 14-year-old who helped her older boyfriend to murder her

grandfather and aunt. Ashley was prosecuted by a lawyer named Laura Poston, who was of the

opinion that Ashley’s actions revealed that she was completely without a conscious and truly

never deserved to reenter society. However, I personally disagree with Poston’s interpretation of

the case and, if I was in her role as prosecutor, would have taken into greater consideration

Ashley’s very young age—and how this makes her more likely to change—as well as the

international precedent against teenage life sentences and thus arrive at a slightly more generous
sentence for Ashley. I believe that for committing such extreme murders, Ashley should have

been sentenced to prison for 15-to-20 years, with the opportunity of parole. International

precedent shows me what a shocking thing it is to condemn a person to die in prison for a crime

committed in the teenage years, and I thus believe that a shorter but still intense sentence would

seriously punish Ashley, but also give her the opportunity to be allowed to reenter society as a—

hopefully—matured and reformed adult. My opinion was shaped in a large way by the

complexity Liptak writes into his account of Ashley Jones’s case.

Liptak presents a subversive and complex look at Ashley’s case by structuring a layered

narrative with lots of connections to Our Tentative Model of Systemic Analysis. In his article,

Liptak explores in great detail the relationships between Ashley Jones, the justice system which

sentenced her, and the greater society in which that justice system operates. From Liptak’s article

the reader can take away that Ashley is evidence of America’s violent society, but also that

America’s violent society led to the stricter legal precedents which would lead to Ashley’s life

sentence, but also the ways in which the US’s strict legal precedents are problematic both in the

cases of juvenile lifers like Ashley and in comparison, to the less-public and more reform-

minded legal proceedings of Europe. Liptak’s narrative is very cyclical and highlights the way

that societal issues and largescale social values can have dramatic effects on individual lives. In

other words, Liptak presents a comprehensive narrative of one event and the social patterns

which led up to it—which is almost exactly the goal of the Model for Systemic Analysis:

creating a comprehensive understanding of human systems.

 Works Cited

Liptak, Adam. “Lifers as Teenagers, Now Seeking Second Chance.” New York Times, 17

October 2007, https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/us/17teenage.html.

Keppler, Nick. “Most of Pennsylvania’s juvenile lifers are still awaiting their new day in court.”

The Times, 26 December 2016, https://www.timesonline.com/b675d830-cb8f-11e6-b6b4-

679d339df0b0.html.