9781422280058

depression and borderline personality disorder , she received four terms of life imprisonment for her crimes. Accomplice to Murder Marlene Jones’s parents, who were well off and stable when Marlene was young, had adopted their daughter when she was only a day old. At age 10, she learned that she had been adopted, and by the time she was 14, Marlene’s home life had become volatile and unstable. The teenager’s grades dropped; she started shoplift- ing; she popped pills to handle the stress. These behaviors led to more dangerous ones: black magic rituals, promiscuous sex, tripping on LSD, becoming a “High Priestess of the Satanic Church.” At 15, Marlene was arrested for grand larceny (the result of a $6,000 shoplifting spree), drug possession, andweapons possession. WhenMarlene’s adoptivemother threatened to send the troubled teen to a juvenile detention center, Marlene decided then and there to kill her. Twomonths later, atMarlene’s prompting,Marlene’s boyfriend bludgeonedher adoptivemother todeathwithahammer and stabbedherwithakitchenknife.When Marlene’s father walked in on the grisly act, her boyfriend shot him four times in the chest. After watching her parents die, Marlene, then 16 years old, left the scene with her boyfriend, visited friends, ate out, and went to the movies. Early the next morning, the teen murderers drove the two mutilated bodies to an open fire pit in a rural area outside of town, doused the corpses in gasoline, and set them on fire. Not All Incarceration Facilities Are the Same The terms jail, prison, and detention center have different meanings. Generally here’s how they differ: • A jail is a smaller facility run by the county, town, or local government located nearest to the place of the arrest or crime that is designed to hold people for shorter periods of time (usually less than a year). • A prison is a larger, more secure facility run by state, provincial (in Can- ada), or federal governments and is designed to hold convicted crimi- nals, including violent offenders, for longer periods of time. • A detention center is where people awaiting trial can be detained; it is also a place where youth, nonviolent offenders, or those with short sentences can serve their time.

Aweek later, after a coworker became concernedoverMarlene’s father’s absence from work, police discovered the crime. Three days after that, Marlene confessed and took police to the bodies. Prosecutors charged Marlene and her boyfriend with two counts of first-degree murder.

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the prison System