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Life Without a ChanceWe as a nation need to stop throwing away our children. Kids are still maturing and developing — as I like to say, they are not done yet. As a result, society treats kids and adults differently in a wide array of contexts: kids cannot drive, sit on juries, enter contracts, join the military, smoke, drink, marry or hold political office. Yet we lock them up and literally throw away the key. Making matters worse, we condemn black youth forever at 18 times the rate of white youth and Latino youth at five times the rate of whites. Young people need to be held accountable for their criminal actions in a way that allows them to grow and develop into successful adults. California’s Senate Bill 9 would improve the law to reflect kids’ capacity for rehabilitation, plus it protects public safety and is fiscally sound. S.B. 9 would allow youth who were sentenced to life in prison without parole for an offense committed while they were under 18 an opportunity to show remorse, rehabilitation and redemption. Under this new law, youth could petition the court for review of their sentence after serving 10 to 25 years first, with no guarantee that a lesser sentence would be imposed. There would also be no guarantee of parole, simply a hope of it where there is now none. Isn’t this the least we could do for our future generation? Right now, there are over 2,500 individuals in prison for the rest of their entire lives because of behavior they engaged in as children, including almost 300 in California. We sentence children as young as 13 and 14 to die in prison; we consider charging 5-year-olds with murder. No other country in the world does this to its young people. Consider Anthony C., Michael A., Sara K. Aren’t our most fragile, vulnerable community members owed a second chance? Cyntoia Brown is but one of our inmate children. Shouldn’t we consider the circumstances of her life of forced prostitution that played into the murder of her pimp at age 16? Last year, the United States Supreme Court agreed that children convicted of non-homicide crimes were too young to warrant absolute hopelessness. Fourteen states already recognize that children should not be sentenced to life in a box, or just don’t do it. California is poised now add another law to the list in recognizing that no child, regardless of his crime, should be forsaken. We have to take responsibility and own how we raise our kids — and how we punish them. Lawmakers in California passed S.B. 9 out of the appropriations committee this week and the entire legislature may vote on it as soon as next week. If you live in California, take action today. Contact your assembly member and urge him or her to support S.B. 9. Tags: criminal justice, jlwop, juvenile justice, juvenile life without parole, overincarceration
Supreme Court: No Life Sentences for Juveniles Who Haven't KilledToday, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 vote that children may not be given a life sentence if they haven't killed anyone. The court's ruling says the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, requires that juveniles serving life sentences must at least be considered for release. In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, "The state has denied [Terrance Graham] any chance to later demonstrate that he is fit to rejoin society based solely on a nonhomicide crime that he committed while he was a child in the eyes of the law…This the Eighth Amendment does not permit." In its opinion, the court also discussed the relevance of international law and practice, noting the "global consensus" against life sentences for juveniles who haven't committed murder, and that "the United States stands alone in a world that has turned its face against life without parole for juvenile nonhomicide offenders." Every year in the U.S., children as young as 13 are sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison without any opportunity for release. Today, more than 2,500 juvenile offenders are sentenced to life without parole. Over 100 of those prisoners have been sentenced to life for a crime less serious than killing. Shockingly, there is no other country in the world that sentences juveniles to life without parole. The Supreme Court's historic decision recognizes that it is cruel to pass a final judgment on adolescents, who have an enormous capacity for change and rehabilitation compared to adults. We commend the court's decision, and are hopeful that today's ruling will start a national conversation about how we sentence young people, most of whom have no opportunity to escape the negative environments that contribute to crime. Learn more about the effort to prohibit juvenile life sentences without parole on the ACLU's site and over at The Campaign for Fair Sentencing of Youth. Tags: jlwop
U.S. Out of Step with the Rest of the WorldToday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida. In both cases, the petitioners argued that when a child is sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, it violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Both Sullivan and Graham committed crimes in which no-one was killed: when he was 13, Joe Sullivan raped a woman, and at 16, Terrance Graham committed armed burglary. Sullivan and Graham are sentenced to die in prison. (Read more about the Graham and Sullivan cases and about the international human rights law angle here.) (PDF)
In the United States, approximately 2,570 children are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole. Children as young as 13 have been sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison without a second chance and an opportunity for release. We are the only country in the world where children are serving such cruel sentences. In February 2006, the ACLU submitted a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) challenging the practice of life without parole sentencing for children under universal human rights principles. The petition alleges that the human rights of children sentenced to life without parolesentences in the state of Michigan have been violated. It asks the IACHR to review Michigan sentencing laws as they are applied to children and find them in violation of the American Declaration of the Rights of Man and other universal human rights principles. Read the petition here. In sentencing children to life sentences without the possibility of parole, the United States is out of step with the rest of the world. As a champion of children's human rights, we should be doing so much better. We must ensure that the most vulnerable members of our society, our children, only receive fair sentences for the crimes they commit and that they are given an opportunity for rehabilitation. Tags: jlwop, juvenile justice
Let's End Juvenile Life Sentences Without Parole Now!Today at 3:00 pm, the U.S. House of Representative's Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security will convene a hearing on H.R. 2289, the "Juvenile Justice Accountability and Improvement Act of 2009.” This legislation would deny funding to states that refuse to offer a parole option to juvenile offenders and authorize state grants to improve legal representation for youths charged with life sentences. It's hard to believe that the United States still sentences children as young as 13 to spend the rest of their lives in prison without any opportunity for release. Right now, there are approximately 2,570 children serving juvenile life sentences without parole in the U.S. — the only country that allows this cruel punishment to happen. Just last week, the ACLU, along with other human rights organizations, sent a letter to the CERD Committee, urging them to conclude that the imposition of this sentence violates the treaty obligations of the United States and fails to recognize customary international human rights law. Young people are still developing mentally and emotionally. Their punishment needs to be focused on rehabilitation and reintegration into society. Offering a parole option to young people provides a second chance — this is in our society's best interest. We've made some progress — currently Alaska, Colorado, Kansas, Kentucky, New Mexico, Oregon and the District of Columbia forbid juvenile life sentences without parole. But we have a long way to go, and we have no time to waste. It's time for a change. Our youth deserve fair sentencing, and the opportunity for rehabilitation. You can watch the hearing online and learn more about the ACLU's work on ending juvenile life without parole at: www.aclu.org/juvenilelifewithoutparole. Tags: children's rights, Human Rights Program, jlwop, juvenile justice |
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