Why Does the U.S. Sentence Adolescents To Life Without Parole?

That's the title of Columbia law prof Sherry Colb's latest column at FindLaw.com.  LINK  Here's the beginning:

Last year the United Nations voted on a resolution to abolish life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for children and young adolescent offenders. The vote was 185 to 1 in favor of abolition, and the United States was the lone dissenter. Until 2005, moreover, when the Supreme Court outlawed the juvenile death penalty under the Eighth Amendment in the case of Roper v. Simmons, twenty states had allowed the execution of murderers who committed their crimes before the age of 18.

In this column, I will explore ways of thinking about crime in the U.S. that might help explain this punitive approach to juvenile offenders.