Shane Pryor escaped custody, prompting a manhunt. But he was just a boy.

In January, Shane Pryor’s story was in the news. It had all the hallmarks of a gripping tale: A young person, in custody after being accused of murder, managed to escape from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. After a four-day manhunt, Pryor was captured on Jan. 28, and charged with escape, aggravated assault, hindering apprehension, and a host of other offenses.

When he was captured, the news was met with relief and praise for a job well done. The narrative served as a reassurance of the efficacy of our law enforcement and justice systems. A “danger to the community” escaped, was speedily captured, and now will face the consequences.

But there is another side to Pryor’s story.

There is another side to Pryor’s story.

Although the news called the hunt for Pryor a “manhunt,” he wasn’t a man. He was a boy, just 17 years old. He was in the custody of the Juvenile Justice Services Center, not Philadelphia police.

Before his escape, Pryor had been confined since he was 14 years old, when he was accused of killing a woman in an alley. Given the seriousness of the offense he was accused of, he was charged as an adult, though he was legally and developmentally a child. Again, he was just 14.

He spent more than three years — since October 2020 — detained in a juvenile detention center for a crime he has not yet been convicted of, and for which he is presumed innocent. He has always maintained his innocence.

Throughout his incarceration, he was appointed five different attorneys, all while his case was delayed again and again without signs of a resolution. According to his counsel, the escape occurred during his roughly 10th visit to the hospital over the course of his three-year detention. As his 18th birthday approached, his lawyer said his client was scared about being transferred to the adult jail, where his codefendant — who was 15 at the time of the crime — was being housed.

Pryor’s story is about much more than his arrest, detention, escape, and recapture. It’s also about all the young people who are swallowed alive by our criminal legal system.

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This is a story echoed repeatedly across the United States, and nowhere more than in Philadelphia.

People who are accused of homicide — of all ages — wait years behind bars prior to trial or plea. Though presumed innocent under the law, our legal system takes years of their lives, along with educational opportunities, jobs, homes, friends, and family.

Pryor spent more than three years in a juvenile facility during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which was marked by overcrowded, unsafe, and unsanitary conditions. He was not adjudicated as guilty, yet he lost three years with his family. He has potentially lost three years of education and was facing even greater losses as he awaited transfer to an adult, maximum security jail.

At the same time, Philadelphia is facing a crisis characterized by a dearth of competent counsel. Philadelphia has failed to provide adequate resources for the advocates on whom Pryor and others in his position must rely.

In Philadelphia, the public defender system has funding to represent only 20% of individuals accused of homicide. Unless they can afford to hire an attorney, the remaining 80% are appointed private counsel. These appointed counsels operate under caps on compensation that are among the lowest in the country.

Defendants are entitled to a new attorney in their first post-conviction review, a type of appeal in which they can argue their trial lawyer was not effective, and failed to investigate and present evidence in their defense. But the prospect of getting better representation then is similarly bleak, since post-conviction review does not offer funding for a public defender and is also strangled by low fee caps.

While Pryor’s escape made headlines, generated conversation, and brought renewed attention to the fact of his existence, the conditions under which his desperation and isolation manifested are all too common throughout the country. It is against this backdrop that Philadelphia has sentenced more people to die in prison — 84% of whom are Black and more than 50% of whom were under 25 years old at the time of arrest — than any other county in the nation. Historically, Philadelphia has also sentenced more juveniles to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole than any other county in America.

I am not involved in Pryor’s case. I have, however, had the privilege of spending decades fighting for those who have been ensnared by our legal system as young people.

It is my hope that when people think about Shane Pryor, they focus not on the fact that he ran away, but on the systemic failures that created conditions under which this young man could see no other choice. We need to guarantee young people have access to experienced and resourced advocates, as well as strong educational services, and are not placed in violent and unsafe environments.

This kind of hopelessness is not inevitable. We have the power to change the system before so many others are lost to it.

Jennifer Merrigan is a Stoneleigh Fellow with Phillips Black, where she and her team work alongside the Conviction Integrity Unit of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office to improve the representation of wrongfully convicted and sentenced youth.