Today's Nashua Telegraph in New Hampshire carries the editorial, "Life with no parole too severe for teens."
Of the 111 juveniles serving such sentences in the nation, 77 are doing their time in Florida prisons. In all, 2,570 juveniles are serving life-without-parole sentences in the United States, the vast majority for crimes that resulted in someone’s death.
While that represents a tiny percentage of those serving life sentences today, that there are any makes us rather unique in our treatment of juvenile offenders. The United States is the only country in the world that imposes life-without-parole sentences for crimes committed prior to the age of 18, according to Human Rights Watch, an international human rights organization.
In Germany, for example, the maximum sentence that can be imposed on someone under 18 for any crime is 10 years; in Italy, it’s 24. And in England, the maximum sentence is based on about half of that given to an adult under similar circumstances.
And:
“The age of 18 is the point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote on behalf of the 5-4 majority in Roper v. Simmons. “It is . . . the age at which the line for death eligibility ought to rest.”
We believe that’s also where the line for lifetime imprisonment for juveniles should be drawn, particularly for those cases that did not end in death. Locking a 17-year-old up with no chance of parole for an armed robbery conviction certainly pushes the boundaries of cruel and unusual punishment.
To be clear, we’re not saying that these teens shouldn’t be punished appropriately. Nor are we even saying that life sentences should be off the table for more heinous offenses.
But we are suggesting that no juvenile should ever receive a life sentence knowing he or she will never have the opportunity to at least seek supervised release once they reach adulthood.
"Giving young offenders another chance," is the title of Signe Wilkinson's column in the Philadelphia Daily News.
THE SCIENCE is now undisputed: Adolescents' brains make them more impetuous, more susceptible to peer pressure, and less able to make good decisions. This lessens their culpability for the crimes they commit.
But adolescents' brains also make it easier for them to change, and to be rehabilitated.
The question before the U.S. Supreme Court - and the country as a whole - is whether to follow the science or cling to "throw away the key" policies that have filled our prisons with many young people who could, if given the chance, be rehabilitated and go on to lead productive lives.
And:
Much of the research on adolescents and crime has been done by Temple University psychology professor Laurence Steinberg, who this week was awarded a $1 million prize from a Swiss philanthropic organization to continue his work.
Steinberg's research, among other scientific findings listed in a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, provides strong pushback against the fad of recent years to try children as adults. The research counters the idea that screams out at us from TV dramas or from people who want to establish their crime-fighting bona fides by giving up on young people. For example:
* Adolescents who are violent in their teen years are not necessarily destined for lives of crime. Far from being irredeemable, juvenile offenders often "grow out of" criminality, even without being arrested or punished first. One study found that 30 percent of boys who were examined had committed one or more violent acts by age 18 - for which few were arrested. Yet more than than three-fourths had stopped being violent by the time they reached 21 and beyond.
* The possibility of being locked away the rest of their lives does not deter juvenile crime. The same impulsiveness documented in brain studies explains why teenagers wouldn't stop to think of the legal consequences before they acted.
It turns out that, even without the science, the founders of the juvenile-justice system got it right 100 years ago. Juvenile court held adolescents accountable for their actions, but provided at least one more chance to set their lives right. Juvenile offenders should get the chance at parole, and redemption; we hope the court concurs.
Yancy Bonner writes, "Some Young Criminals Should Have Second Chance," for Wyoming's Powell Tribune.
The U.S. Supreme Court this week is debating the constitutionality of sentencing juvenile criminals to life sentences without the possibility of parole.
A group of high-profile people — among them an actor/director, a former assistant U.S. attorney, a critically-acclaimed poet and retired U.S. Senator Alan Simpson — all former juvenile offenders, argue that courts should have discretion in deciding whether young criminals in non-homicide cases should, at some point, have a second chance.
Two cases being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court have brought the issue to national attention. Lawyers for the defendants in each case argue that life sentences with no chance for parole amount to cruel and unusual punishment — and consequently violate their clients’ constitutional rights.
Make no mistake about it: No one is downplaying the severity of the crimes committed — in these two cases or others nationwide.
Supporters of the appeals simply maintain that cases involving juveniles should be scrutinized on a case-by-case basis instead of being dictated by mandatory sentencing rules.
In a recent opinion piece in The Washington Post, Simpson wrote, “If ... a parole board finds out that a miscreant hasn’t changed, then keep him or her in prison. But some juvenile offenders make real efforts while they are in jail, and we should make honest adjustments for them.”
It’s a rare adult who can say he or she never did anything stupid or reckless in their teenage years. Consequences are akin to a foreign language for many teens, but as adults those same people often begin to make better choices.
Earlier coverage begins with this post; more on Laurence Steinberg, here.
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