Good Behavior

Recently there has been much debate over the morality of allowing prisoners to drop time served from their sentence for demonstrating “good behavior”. Criminals who have committed horrific crimes such as murder are able to drop up 12 years as reported in a recent article. Local journalist have begun an investigation on how many hardcore prisoners are being allowed to drop time from their sentence who have committed crimes that are as extreme as murder for their advantage of good behavior. Their findings are questionable as to why these prisoners are able to decrease the amount of time served for committing a crime as severe as murdering an innocent child. In local news, a child killer named Michael Woodmansee has brought this issue to attention for his conviction in 1983 for killing a 5 year old boy who lived next door. Woodmansee has been sentenced to 40 years in prison, but have been able to reduce this sentence by 12 years for good behavior.

Protestors against his early release have arranged rallies to help keep Woodmansee behind bars to serve his complete sentence. Displaying signs that reads, “Keep this animal caged” with the word murderer at the end, the protestors have been said to rally outside of the prison in hopes of being heard. The victim’s father has also voiced his opinion on his release, threatening that he would kill him if he could. Although, Woodmansee has committed this murder over 20 years ago I understand the reason why people feel so strongly about him completing his sentence. In every way possible I feel that it is wrong to harm an innocent child. Children are very gullible and defenseless and it is hard to understand why a person particularly an adult would seek harm against them. Personally this is a story that hits me because I hate to hear stories such as the one described. I also feel that he should serve his time and that being able to drop 12 years is simply absurd. Good behavior isn’t a valid reason for allowing a person who has and potentially can endanger the lives of others especially children. Just because someone served a number of years behind bars, does not justify their actions for the reason why they were put there to begin with.

I do believe that people can change and that some people learn a valuable lesson from being in prison, but this man deliberately killed an innocent child and was only sentenced to 40 years in prison. He robbed this child of his life, but still lives to display this sense of “good behavior”.  This is a situation that I feel strongly about although I have never written to an editor or elected official. I think mostly the reason for this is because I never thought about doing it. I feel strong about a few issues that I hope to one day work where I am able to help improve these issues, but I haven’t personally voiced my opinion in writing to anyone that may improve the issue. Arranging protests and becoming a voice on my own seems farfetched maybe because I think it will be disregarded or I may be involved in an issue that can potentially become dangerous. I wouldn’t mind engaging in an issue that I am concerned with if I were teamed with others that are doing the same.

I think it is important for my peers to get involved as well and apart of the reason why I think many of my peers aren’t involved is for the same reasons I haven’t taken the initiative to be. I think that my peers may want to be involved in issues that they are passionate about, but disregard these issues because it takes time, effort, and patience in which much of us are busy with what is currently going on in our own lives and the fact is despite our efforts to contribute to change an issue, more likely our voices would be disregarded as another complaint.