Weep for lives behind bars

Phumla Matjila: I'm not sure what unleashed the torrent of tears. Was it his young, handsome face spread on a magazine that made me weep for him?

Or was it the realisation that the world can sometimes be a scary place for children? Perhaps it was the realisation that I, too, was not immune from that single event that can change my life forever.

This was 14 years ago. I had buried this memory in the recesses of my mind, along with the picture of the boy on whose face my tears fell.

But last month, while watching a documentary about more children like him in prisons all over the US, my heart bled again for him - and for his family.

Azikiwe Kambule. Do you remember him? The 17-year-old from Soweto who was facing the death sentence in the US in 1997?

Reading his story in a tattered magazine I had found in my grandmother's house was surreal.

Kambule left South Africa for Mississippi with his parents in 1994. His mother had been awarded a scholarship to study psychology at Jackson State University.

What was supposed to be a new and exciting chapter for the former Parktown Boys pupil and his family soon turned into a nightmare.

At school Kambule managed to maintain his impressive academic record, but struggled to fit into his new environment. He was teased about his accent and mannerisms, but befriended a group of older boys.

In a statement made to the police, Kambule described the events of January 26 1996 which led to his arrest.

He told police he was travelling with his 21-year-old friend Santonio Berry, who had a criminal record.

Berry saw social worker Pam McGill in a red sports car which he fancied. Berry stole the car at gunpoint, forced McGill into the passenger seat and ordered Kambule to get into the back seat.

He then drove to the woods and told Kambule to wait in the car. He shot McGill. The two boys were arrested a few days later.

Berry accepted a plea bargain and life imprisonment without parole in exchange for admitting to killing McGill and testifying against Kambule.

Kambule maintained his innocence and said he didn't know Berry planned to steal a car and kill McGill. He refused a plea bargain of life imprisonment without parole.

The prosecution continued to press for the death penalty.

In June 1997, the judge rejected the prosecution's attempt to seek the death penalty.

Fearful the prosecution would continue to press for a charge of murder to gain a sentence of life imprisonment without parole, Kambule agreed to a plea bargain.

He pleaded guilty to aiding a hijacking and assisting in the attempt to sell the car in exchange for the changes of murder being dropped against him.

Despite the plea bargain, Kambule was sentence to the maximum sentence of 35 year in prison without the possibility of parole.

His attempts to appeal the sentence have been rejected.

There are many more prisoners like him like him in the US justice system.

Jacob Ind, Trevor Jones, Andrew Medina, Nathan Ybanez and Erik Jensen - the subjects of Frontline's documentary When Kids Get Life, which reminded me of Kambule's case - are in the same boat.

They were juveniles when sentenced to life without parole.

Colorado, according to the documentary, was a trailblazer in the area of juvenile justice, focusing on rehabilitation instead of punishment. But when violent crimes committed by youngsters increased in the '80s and '90s, the law got tougher on young offenders.

Life sentences without the possibility of parole were handed out to 15-year-old first-time offenders.

The result is that there are more than 2 000 inmates who were under 18 when they were handed out life sentences in the US.

According to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, in the rest of the world there are only 12 such cases of prisoners serving life sentences without parole for crimes they committed when they were under 18.

Some of the crimes these juveniles committed are only paralleled by the abuse committed by the adults in their lives.

Ind, featured in When Kids Get Life, was only 15 when he murdered his mother and his stepfather, who had been sexually abusing him and his brother for years. During the trial, and in an effort to get the harshest possible sentence passed, prosecutors said his lawyer was "exaggerating the abuse" to give him an excuse to kill.

Ybanez and Jensen, on the other hand, were high school students living in a wealthy suburb. Ybanez killed his mother and Jensen was implicated in the crime by another friend, who was involved in efforts to cover up the crime. The boys, both without previous criminal records, were sentenced to life without parole.

The questions I had 14 years ago are still bugging me.

Where is the rehabilitation element of the sentence when juveniles are sentenced to life?

What happened to an observation by a supreme court judge that "children have a very special place in life which the law should reflect"?

And who bears the punishment for the failure of family, the school system and society in the youth's criminal behaviour?