In yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, reporter Gary Marx told the story of Jessie Rankins. In 1994, Rankins and a friend dropped a 5-year-old boy to his death from the window of a high-rise public housing complex. Now in his ’20s Rankins told the Tribune that even as a young kid, he remembers not wanting to live. A life like that may seem doomed to failure, but can youth like Rankins succeed? Is it safe to have child and teen murderers return to the community as adults after being imprisoned in our current system? What’s the alternative? 

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