Behind every crime headline is a mountain of tragedy for all involved. The Wabash Valley Correctional Institution in southwestern Indiana is a refuge from these headlines. 2,100 prisoners are being held on charges ranging from rape to murder.
Wabash is also unlike any other adult prison in Indiana. It’s a cell that houses a cell of 53 children who were sentenced as adults and weren’t even ready for everything in prison.
Colt Lundy, 15, is about to begin his 30-year sentence for conspiring to murder and shoot his stepfather. He and a 12-year-old accomplice were arrested in Illinois after the boys fled in the victim’s car. What caused two children, neither of whom had any exposure to the law, to act in such an unbelievable way?
The report offered no real explanation, and neither boy chose to discuss details of the crime. Teens like Colt Lundy and his roommates are not alone. In the United States, nearly 10,000 children under the age of 18 spend time in prisons and adult prisons.
In Indiana, all children sentenced as adults in juvenile prisons are confined to the expansive Wabash compound, and all inmates are not segregated in adjacent cell blocks. Juvenile offenders are segregated from adult inmates. The kids eat there, relax there, and go to school there. For most children, time does seem to stand still. But once juvenile offenders turn 18, they’re moved from the juvenile section to the adult section, either at the Wabash or one of Indiana’s other 21 adult facilities.
At the age of sixteen, Miles Folsom was sentenced to criminal imprisonment for robbery. He still dominates local newspaper headlines with what he calls “the worst day of his life”. Some might have a hard time comparing Miles in the newspaper story to Miles in the Wabash, since Folsom was one of the standouts in the youth department and served as an educational mentor to newborn children. By the time he was 18, he had earned his general education certificate in prison and got a job as a cleaner in the kitchen.
It’s hard to adjust to Wabash’s different types of kids. From Colt Lundy, 15, to Robert, 18, who was serving a 30-year sentence for conspiracy to murder without any historians in the system.
When it comes to children and punishment, the question that needs to be answered is: Do children belong in adult prisons, no matter what crime they commit?
Directed by: Karen Grau
