NEWSBYR. DWAYNE BETTS

The inside of a cell will try to erase you. Efrén Paredes, Jr. knows that, just as his life sentence has also taught him how time can relentlessly add up each day, without any hope for release. Convicted for murder and robbery at the age of 15, Paredes's life should trouble us all. But the really troubling question isn't the nature of his crimes, but rather why — after two decades — he still sits inside a cell in a Michigan prison.

It's hard to imagine what that much time does to a person. Harder still to imagine how Paredes, incarcerated at 15, has in over 20 years of prison transformed himself into a passionate advocate for justice, a highly intelligent man and a skilled organizer. During his recent hearing before the Michigan Board of parole, over two hundred people testified — many attesting to his ability to serve as a community asset and to the man that he has become in prison. Others, by contrast, argued that he should remain in prison. Somewhere between these two perspectives, we have lost the idea of justice.

The death of Rick Tetzlaff, who Paredes allegedly killed, was tragic. There's no escaping the brutality of it. There is no escaping the impact of Tetzlaff's death on his family and on his community. But justice here shouldn't mean that a 15-year-old gets sentenced to life in prison without parole.

I was 5’6” tall and only 125 pounds.  This is what I tell people when they ask what was it like being in prison at 16.  Even before I pled guilty there was no real consideration given to my size, my immaturity or the prospects for my survival as I was placed in jail cells and blocks with adults. I hadn’t won a fight in years and couldn’t imagine be locked inside a cell with men as violent as reports about prisons in Virginia said.  The court process was concerned with whether I was guilty or innocent; my family was lost, trying to figure out how I’d gotten myself in handcuffs.

An eight-year sentence left with me time to piece together what led me to pick up a gun and carjack a man, searching for the answers I couldn’t give the judge and dealing with what it means to live in a place that is governed by violence.  More than that, however, I spent time believing that I could get an education to craft my life into something more than a series of jail cells.  Often, years passed and I found myself in prisons so far away from my family that I couldn’t get a visit.  Phone calls were so expensive that I only heard the voices of guards, other prisoners and the sounds that came into my head as I read books and letters.  I thought my release would be a way to end the nightmare of living with a mistake, but I was wrong.