Martha Odom was a senior at Ascension Episcopal School in Baton Rouge. She had a future. She had friends. She was at the Mall of Louisiana on Thursday doing what teenagers do — hanging out, being young, living her life.

Now she’s dead. Because a 17-year-old with an “extensive criminal history” — those are the official words, by the way — walked into that mall and opened fire. Two other high school seniors were shot and wounded. Over a social media dispute.

How does a kid who can’t legally buy a cigarette already have a record that law enforcement describes as “extensive”?

We all know how. The system caught him. The system processed him. The system released him. The system caught him again. Processed him again. Released him again. Repeat until somebody dies.

Markel Lee — that’s the shooter’s name — was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Which is great. Except that Martha Odom is still dead, and every single person in the juvenile justice system who looked at this kid’s file, shrugged, and sent him back out onto the street should have to answer for that.

Gov. Jeff Landry didn’t mince words. He called for life sentences and went straight at the throat of what he called “hug-a-thug policies.” That’s not a phrase focus-grouped by some consultant. That’s a governor who’s watched the revolving door of juvenile justice spin until it killed someone.

“Put them away for life,” Landry said.

Hard to argue with that when you’re looking at the alternative — which is apparently letting violent juveniles collect arrests like Pokémon cards until they graduate to murder.

This is what soft-on-crime looks like. Not in the abstract. Not in a policy paper. Not in a debate on cable news where some defense attorney argues that “the juvenile brain isn’t fully developed” and therefore we should keep giving chances to kids who keep choosing violence.

It looks like Martha Odom’s empty chair at graduation.

Landry also pointed the finger at parents, and he’s right about that too. But here’s the thing — even when parents fail, the justice system is supposed to be the backstop. That’s the whole point. When a kid commits crime after crime and the system keeps recycling him back into the population, the system has become an accomplice.

Every progressive DA, every soft-on-crime judge, every activist group that lobbied to keep juvenile offenders out of detention — they all own a piece of this. They built a system designed to protect the criminal at the expense of the victim, and now an 18-year-old girl who never hurt anyone is gone.

Two of Martha’s classmates are in the hospital. Their senior year ends not with prom and graduation but with bullet wounds and a funeral.

And somewhere out there, right now, there’s another kid with a record just like Markel Lee’s. Another “juvenile offender” with a file full of arrests and zero consequences. Another ticking clock. The system knows he exists. The system has his paperwork. And the system is going to release him right back into your neighborhood, your mall, your kids’ school.

Because that’s what “hug-a-thug” gets you.

Gov. Landry is right. Lock them up. For life if you have to. Because the only person who should have been in a cage on Thursday was Markel Lee — and instead, he was walking free in a shopping mall with a gun.

Martha Odom deserved better. Her family deserves better. And the state of Louisiana — which, credit to Landry, is actually trying to fix this — deserves leaders who will stop treating violent criminals like victims and start protecting the actual victims before they end up in the ground.

No more revolving doors. No more second chances for kids who’ve already burned through their fifth. Put them away.