Abolish Life Without Parole Sentences for Children in the USA

2011-11-21T09:21:00.000-05:00

2011-11-18T16:09:00.001-05:00

November 17, 2011

Dear Friends,

There are many people who have no idea that the United States sentences youth to life without parole--or that we are the only country that imposes this extreme sentence on youth. The CFSY has produced a new video to raise awareness about this unjust practice.

You can help inform and inspire supporters by sharing our new video with your networks.

Help build the movement by sharing this with your friends, family and colleagues, because youth should never be sentenced to die in prison. Together, I know we can end the practice of sentencing youth to life without parole.

In Solidarity,

Jody Kent Lavy

Director & National Coordinator

Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth

www.fairsentencingofyouth.org

2011-11-18T16:04:00.001-05:00

Juvenile lifers and the tragedy of certainty (guest commentary)

Published: Friday, November 18, 2011, 6:05 AM Updated: Friday, November 18, 2011, 7:37 AM

By Guest writer

By Mark Osler
I’ve spent my career prosecuting criminals, teaching criminal law, advocating reforms, and studying our criminal justice system. From all of that, I am convinced of only one absolute truth: That all of it, every bit, is tragedy. When we execute a murderer, it does not un-murder the victim, but adds to the pile of the dead. When we lock up a robber, it does not reverse a victim’s trauma, and only rarely does it restore the victim’s wealth. This is the cruel necessity of criminal law — that the best we can do is manage and try to limit the spread of tragedy.
Done well, the vocation of criminal law is emotionally exhausting for exactly this reason. One’s work is about death and loss and pain, and even when a prosecutor wins a case and obtains a fair sentence, that sentence is meted out in terms of yet more death and loss and pain. The victories are shrouded in loss.
One unfortunate effect of this bare fact is that those involved in criminal law are prone to become too certain in their views and over-committed to their work. We see this in stories like the Hank Skinner case out of Texas, where prosecutors have withheld DNA evidence from testing for years to protect their conviction. This over-commitment rankles our sensibilities, but at a human level it makes sense. Victims’ family members and prosecutors are emotionally bonded to the conviction because it is theirs -- their stake within a disordered realm of tragedy. They asked for death. Put plainly, these victims and prosecutors literally and publicly stated that they wanted someone to die. Given the stark nature of identifying someone to be killed, should we be surprised at the depth of their commitment, even in the face of rational argument?

Mark Osler

Professor Susan Bandes has studied the emotional over-commitment of prosecutors and victims, and sees the relationship between the two as one reason they value a conviction or tough sentence above all else. Their discussions can become a narrow feedback loop, which re-enforces the idea that a conviction and sentence must be maintained at all costs.
The discussion in Michigan of the sentence of life without parole for juvenile offenders is buried deep within this nest of tragedy and over-commitment. Particularly odd is the total certainty of some victims’ family members that a child of 16 will be a lethal danger the remainder of his life. How could anyone know that? There is no scientific test that predicts the future in that way. Such certainty is rooted in something deeply personal and dark, and such shrouded, private certainties should not be the basis for a system of public justice.

Reason tells us that they must be wrong—there simply is no rational basis for the idea that all 358 juvenile lifers in Michigan are beyond redemption, and that we can determine this fact before those children are old enough to vote or enter a bar or go off to college.
The truth within the tragedy is this: When we look at a 16-year-old, we can’t be sure how that kid will turn out. Perhaps he will be a danger to society the remainder of his life. Or, perhaps, he won’t be. We have to wait and see. That’s the role of parole. It allows experts to monitor the progress of the convicted to determine how they have changed, if at all.
Equally unfounded is the belief of some that the executive pardon power can take care of this issue. Clemency in the form of commutation of sentences is rarely given these days — as evidenced by the fact that President Obama has granted not a single commutation petition. Governors vary wildly in their use of this power, even when they do deign to use it. Relying on something so sparse, unstructured, and unpredictable is a poor form of justice.
I believe in public prosecution and the incapacitation of dangerous people through incarceration. However, I also believe that I can’t predict the future, especially the future of those who are not fully formed, and neither can those who are calling for the continuing vitality of juvenile life without parole. We need to care for victims and their family members, listen to them, do what is possible to make them more whole, but we should not imagine that they have the extraordinary power to predict what a 16-year-old boy will be like in 20 or 30 or 40 years. To do so is to compound tragedy unnecessarily, and that is the very result we must seek to avoid as we administer justice.
-- Mark Osler was a federal prosecutor in the Detroit area from 1995 to 2000. A Detroit and Grosse Pointe native, he graduated from Yale Law School and is now a professor at the University of St. Thomas Law School in Minnesota. His scholarly work has consistently confronted the problem of inflexibility in sentencing and corrections.

Justices Bar Life Terms for Youths Who Haven’t Killed

2010-05-25T17:57:00.002-04:00

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

May 17, 2010

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has ruled that teenagers may not be locked up for life without chance of parole if they haven't killed anyone.

By a 5-4 vote Monday, the court says the Constitution requires that young people serving life sentences must at least be considered for release.

The court ruled in the case of Terrance Graham, who was implicated in armed robberies when he was 16 and 17. Graham, now 22, is in prison in Florida, which holds more than 70 percent of juvenile defendants locked up for life for crimes other than homicide.

''The state has denied him 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,'' Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. ''This the Eighth Amendment does not permit.''

Chief Justice John Roberts agreed with Kennedy and the court's four liberal justices about Graham. But Roberts did not join the majority opinion as it applies to all young offenders who are locked up for crimes other than murder.

Life sentences with no chance of parole are rare and harsh for juveniles tried as adults and convicted of crimes less serious than killing, although roughly three dozen states allow for the possibility of such prison terms. Just over 100 prison inmates in the United States are serving those terms, according to data compiled by opponents of the sentences.

Those inmates are in Florida and seven other states -- California, Delaware, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska and South Carolina -- according to a Florida State University study. More than 2,000 other juveniles are serving life without parole for killing someone. Their sentences are not affected by Monday's decision.

Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented from Monday's ruling.

Thomas criticized the majority for imposing ''its own sense of morality and retributive justice'' on state lawmakers and voters who chose to give state judges the option of life-without-parole sentences.

''I am unwilling to assume that we, as members of this court, are any more capable of making such moral judgments than our fellow citizens,'' Thomas said.

Kennedy, however, said that the high court ruling does not ensure anyone's release. ''What the state must do, however, is give defendants like Graham some meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation,'' Kennedy said.

Kennedy wrote the Supreme Court opinion in 2005 that ruled out the death penalty for people under 18, judging them less responsible than adults.

Monday's decision is an extension of the rationale he used then.

An expert in sentencing law said the outcome is likely to pose challenges to judges and lawyers in cases of young offenders.

For example, are extremely long sentences of 35 years to 40 years that offer no chance at parole before release constitutional?

The court's ''ruling likely will produce challenges for lawyers and lower courts to determine just whether and when other extreme prison terms are constitutionally problematic,'' said Ohio State University law professor Douglas Berman.

In November, the justices heard argument in two cases. The other involved Joe Sullivan, also of Florida, who was sent away for life for raping an elderly woman when he was 13. The court did not issue an opinion in Sullivan's case, but he will benefit from the Graham ruling.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/05/17/us/AP-US-Supreme-Court-Juvenile-Sentences.html?_r=2

The Young and the Reckless

2009-11-14T12:07:00.001-05:00

The Young and the Reckless

by Elizabeth S. Scott & Laurence Steinberg
The New York Times
Friday, November 13, 2009

ON Monday, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases that ask whether sentencing a juvenile to life in prison without the possibility of parole is a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

Those who hope the court will ban this sort of sentencing point to the 2005 decision in Roper v. Simmons, in which the court abolished the juvenile death penalty. They believe that the logic the justices applied in Roper to exclude minors from capital punishment should extend to life without parole as well.

Those who hope the justices will retain life sentences for juveniles argue that “death is different,” and that the court should exercise restraint, as it typically does when reviewing non-capital sentencing decisions for fairness under the proportionality principle.

Certainly, death is different. But the sentence of life in prison without parole is also different from even lengthy conventional sentences; it is a judgment that an offender will never be fit to rejoin civil society, however long he lives. This punishment may be suitable for adults who have committed terrible crimes, but it is never a fair sentence for a juvenile, whose character is unformed and whose involvement in crime reflects the immature judgment of adolescence.

A crucial lesson of the Roper case is that the developmental differences between adolescents and adults are important under the Eighth Amendment, as they are in other areas of constitutional law. In deciding to end the juvenile death penalty, the court repeatedly emphasized the relative immaturity of minors, even at age 17, as compared to adults — a point that is well established in behavioral research and finds growing support in brain science.

Writing for the majority in Roper, Justice Anthony Kennedy observed that juveniles’ impulsivity, recklessness and susceptibility to peer pressure made them inherently less responsible than adults. Justice Kennedy also noted juveniles’ potential for rehabilitation, because their personality and character traits are less fixed than adults.

In the years since the Roper ruling, research on adolescent brain and behavioral development has provided additional support for Justice Kennedy’s observations. There is now a consensus among neuroscientists, for example, that brain regions and systems responsible for foresight, self-regulation, risk assessment and responsiveness to social influences continue to mature into young adulthood. This evidence that adolescents are psychologically and neurologically less mature than adults should be important in deciding how to punish their criminal acts.

In Monday’s oral argument, the justices did not question the proposition that juveniles generally are psychologically less mature than adults. The debate focused instead on whether the mitigating trait of immaturity justified a categorical exclusion of juveniles from the sentence of life without parole.

Some justices argued instead that age and maturity should be considered in sentencing on a case-by-case basis. But this approach was rejected by the court in Roper — and it should be rejected here as well. As Roper recognized, even psychological experts are unable to distinguish between the young person whose crime reflects transient immaturity and the rare juvenile offender who may deserve the harsh sentence of life without parole. If experts can’t reliably make this determination, then it seems unlikely that juries and judges would be able to do much better.

The two Florida offenders whose cases will be decided by the court differ in age and in their offenses: Terrance Graham was sentenced to life without parole for a probation violation involving a house break-in at age 17, while Joe Sullivan was convicted of sexual assault at age 13.

It is possible that the court will treat these two cases differently. But in both cases, the lower court decisions should be struck down. For a minor to be confined in prison for life with no possibility of ever having the opportunity to demonstrate that he should be allowed to rejoin society is an egregious violation of the Eighth Amendment, especially for a crime in which no life was lost.

Such a sentence offends “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society,” the court’s announced standard for reviewing state punishment under the Eighth Amendment. Indeed, in our opinion, life without parole is never a fair sentence for a juvenile, even in a murder case.

There is no question that teenagers who commit serious crimes should be held accountable and punished, and that society must be protected from young people who are violent and dangerous. But studies show that the vast majority of juveniles who commit crimes — even very serious crimes — grow up to be law-abiding adults, and that it is impossible to predict which juvenile offenders will become career criminals.

Absent an ability to do this, and in light of what science tells us about the capacity for adolescents to change, it makes no sense to lock up any young offender and throw away the key.

Elizabeth S. Scott, a professor of law at Columbia, and Laurence Steinberg, a professor of psychology at Temple, are co-authors of “Rethinking Juvenile Justice.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/opinion/14scott.html

U.S. Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments About Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP) Sentences

2009-11-10T05:29:00.000-05:00

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the cases of Sullivan v. Florida, No. 08-7621 and Graham v. Florida, No. 08-7412. In both cases juveniles received sentences of life in prison without parole (LWOP).

Their attorneys argued that such a sentence unfairly condemned adolescents to die in prison and rejected any hope that they could change and could be rehabilitated.

You can read or download the oral arguments that were held in both cases by visiting the following two links. If you know a prisoner who was sentenced to LWOP when s/he was a juvenile please print a copy of the transcripts and share it with them.

Sullivan v. Florida, No. 08-7621 Oral Argument Transcript 11-9-09

Graham v. Florida, No. 08-7412 Oral Argument Transcript 11-9-09

"Juvenile Life Without Parole: The Potential for Progress" by Nezua

2009-11-09T14:38:00.005-05:00

Juvenile Life Without Parole: The Potential for Progress

By Nezua

The coming Supreme Court term may see the United States move closer to its ideals of justice, or remain stubbornly locked in last place in at least one area—how we treat the smallest and weakest among us. Of all nations in the world, the United States of America is the last to ban sentences that require children to die in prison for crimes committed while young. Additionally, aside from Somalia, the USA stands alone in refusing to ratify Article 37 of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Were we to do so, the possibility of parole would have to be given to children.

On the 2008 campaign trail, when asked about the CRC, then-candidate Obama said, “It is embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land.” He went on to promise that “I will review this and other treaties and ensure that the United States resumes its global leadership in human rights.”

Two cases are currently before the Supreme Court that afford our nation the opportunity to right this wrong and join the modern world. Sullivan vs. Florida and Graham vs. Florida will require the Supreme Court to rule on whether life sentences for juveniles that preclude the possibility of parole (JLWOP) are, in fact, constitutional.

As a nation, we move forward bit by bit. At times we take large strides to correct a slow pace. The issue of Juvenile Life Without Parole is an area that now demands a second look. One day soon, the idea of sentencing children to die in prison without even the possibility to redeem themselves will seem as bizarre as those laws that barred women from voting.

In fact, it was only in 2005, in Roper vs. Simmons, that the Supreme Court finally ruled the juvenile death penalty was unconstitutional. In arguing, the text describes a paradigm that informs legal reasoning in US law and specifically the Eighth Amendment’s barring of cruel and unusual punishment. It does this by consulting “objective indicia of consensus,” or signs in society or practicing of law that certain punishments or rulings or situations are no longer deemed accepted by the social body. The court need not see a definite declaration of as much, it infers this from many indicators.

A simpler way to illustrate this dynamic would be to say given time, the human being grows and evolves. A society is nothing more than a collection of human beings, and as such, evolves. A wise law accounts for the progress a society is making by embodying its current morality or lean toward new mores.

We need only look to our recent past to see examples. What is reasonable at one time to a person, or a nation of people (e.g., child labor, women as property, right to own slaves) can later be understood to be (and have always been) unreasonable or unjust. In general, we forgive a society for being imperfect (as people are imperfect) though we demand it improve at all times.

All apparent indicators in our society today imply that people change over time. That the human condition is not sealed in childhood, but of a developing and transient state. We speak to the young often, reminding them they most likely will look back and see things very differently, such is the change that a human mind and heart travel on the path to adulthood. It makes sense that this understanding would be codified in the sentencing of minors.

Today, parole exists for adults. It is a given that a grown person can see the error of their ways and have changed over time, or simply grow to be something better than they were. Or at least merit a second chance. But aren’t children even more likely to change over time than an adult who has already grown through his or her most malleable and fluid phases of mental and emotional development? And who is more deserving of a second chance than a child? None of this is to say every child sentenced to life in prison would or should walk free. The possibility of parole is just that: possibility. The allowance that a person is not a static thing. A hope for a human being to hold on to while in the hell that prisons are. A reason for them to live, and live well.

To hold that juvenile life without parole sentences are just, one would also have to exclude children from this possibility of potential to change over time. To hold that juvenile life without parole sentences are fair, we also must consider those people—specifically young people—who break a law to be of a type of human unlike the perpetually law-abiding and thus subject to a separate morality. These types of notions on criminal nature was once prevalent in the US in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when doctors and scientists of the era went to great lengths to attempt a codification of forehead measurements or family histories to make a case for criminality being something that marked one apart from the rest of the species. It was a gross and unenlightened view that aided the concurrent eugenics practices of the day. Clearly we have moved beyond the thinking of those times.

Another troubling aspect of the lack of any possibility to redress a life sentence is how people of color are disproportionately affected by so many aspects of law, from who gets stopped more, searched more, and shot more, to sentencing. In the US, African American children are actually ten times more likely than white children to receive a life without parole sentence. In California, the ratio is even more striking, at an egregious 20 to 1. When it comes to Latinos, half of the inmates incarcerated in federal prison have no previous criminal record, are least likely to be both violent and nonviolent recidivists. At the same time, Latinos are less likely overall to be given parole or probation than non-Latinos! These facts all add up to a powerful and destructive form of institutionalized racism. Given we understand those iniquities in our justice system exist and have been documented, are we comfortable with a life sentence in prison for minors, without even the possibility of parole one day? Doesn’t this mechanism resemble a giant tax-payer-funded killing machine aimed at one part of the population?

Finally, what of those who are innocent of the crimes for which they have been accused, and wrongly convicted? A terrible nexus of race and law and injustice frame the case of Efrén Paredes, Jr, a Latino honor student wrongfully convicted at 15 years old of a murder and armed robbery that others have already plead guilty to being involved in. Paredes was convicted and given two life sentences on entirely circumstantial evidence in an one of the US’ top 25 most segregated towns by a nearly all-white police department, court, and jury. Parades’ innocence is maintained worldwide and an effort to free him has been enjoined by activists, authors and experts like world renowned wrongful convictions expert Paul Ciolino, as well as the National Lawyer’s Guild (NLG). Can we truly look at the horror that receiving such a sentence would be to an innocent person and yet insist it makes sense in 2009 to make the possibility of parole something one needs to grow into, like the right to drink? To offer it to adults, but to withhold it from children?

You can help push back against injustices like this. Please take a moment and sign the petition to show your support not only for Efrén’s release, but for the over 2,500 prisoners sentenced to life without parole when they were juveniles. In addition to the myriad holes in the case against Efrén, in September of this year the Berrien County prosecuter who defended the county’s case against Paredes claiming police do not commit misconduct has had to retract those words. Corruption has been exposed in the Berrien county police department’s Narcotics unit, and according to David Robinson, a former Detroit police officer turned attorney, “Someone was asleep at the switch in terms of administrative responsibility to operate the police department.” In his estimate, police misbehavior has gone on “over a significant period of time.”

Surely any reasonable mind understands when humans come together and interact in systems guided by even the most noble intent, injustices will occur. As a principle in general, this is inarguable. To drag out a rather stale cliché and apologize for waking it, “that’s why they put erasers on pencils.” And sometimes this means leaving room not only for the mistakes of the convicted, but for the mistakes that the system—being but system of imperfect persons working together—will inevitably make.

Giving children convicted of life sentences the possibility of parole is simply what a modern society provides itself so that it may maintain the belief that it would never purposefully and unjustly put a child to death in a big, locked box.

May the Supreme Court rule the same way.

"Don't Give Up On the Kids" by R. Dwayne Betts

2009-11-03T14:44:00.003-05:00

Don't Give Up On the Kids

Supreme Court should reject life without parole for juveniles, says one who knows the system

by R. Dwayne Betts
The Baltimore Sun
November 1, 2009

A life sentence begins with Rashid's name.

I can't walk away from the first time I looked into his 15-year-old eyes, the eyes of someone close to my age, and knew he was sentenced to die in prison. When I met Rashid, his voice still carried the cracks and high notes that signaled adolescence, and his smooth face had never felt a razor. The same signs that belied my youth belied his. We were at the Southampton Receiving Center in Virginia, waiting on a bus to take us to prison.

No fewer than a dozen of us were Rashid's age, all with peers at home waiting on driver's licenses, graduations and proms - while we waited for the morning that would lead us to a prison cell. Rashid's time was legend: three life sentences with no chance for parole. It meant he awoke each morning knowing he would one day flatline within arm's reach of a cell.

I looked at him, and the judge's voice echoed in my head: "Are you aware your charges carry a life sentence?" Rashid wasn't old enough to drive, vote or serve on a jury of his peers - but he was old enough to walk out of a courtroom with a sentence that ends in a casket. After I met Rashid, my nine-year sentence for carjacking seemed like a gift.

Five years after my own release from prison - and months after delivering a commencement speech at the University of Maryland's graduation, speaking moments before CIA Director Leon Panetta - I found myself on an American Bar Association panel with lawyers and psychologists. A woman in the audience asked me what I thought should be done to a child who commits the kinds of crimes that end with life without the possibility of parole; I misheard her question and kept thinking that she had asked what I would do or say if the victim had been my family member.

As I began to answer her question, I thought about Rashid, and about how I couldn't escape the nightmare of being in a closed cell. I thought about my relatives, and how in my family tree there were both victims of violence and perpetrators. I thought about the judge reminding me of the life sentence I faced. And then I asked myself: What would I want if the victim were my daughter, or my sister? In my head there were two horrors, and I realized that the horror of life in prison and everything it means doesn't make right the horror of crimes I can't begin to imagine.

I told the woman that the justice system was not created to respond the way a family member would. We ask our justice system to do more than just act on impulse. We ask it to stand for more than vengeance. A system that didn't believe in the rehabilitation of young people would have left Alan K. Simpson a statistic and not given him room to mature to the point where he could become a United States senator. Charles S. Dutton wouldn't be a renowned actor. Many nameless men and women who are productive members of our society would still be in prison cells.

On Nov. 9, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida, cases in which juveniles were sentenced to life without parole for non-homicide offenses. The court will decide whether such sentences are constitutional. I, along with a number of former juvenile offenders - including Mr. Simpson and Mr. Dutton - filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the justices to give young offenders the opportunity to have their sentences reviewed later.

Sixteen years doesn't prepare you for much. Fifteen years prepares you for even less, and I remember what Rashid's eyes looked like the day he walked to my cell door asking who he should or shouldn't let be a friend to him. He was a boy in a jungle and I, only a year older, was playing at being a man. Fifteen years doesn't prepare you for prison, and it doesn't prepare you to understand just how lasting scars can be.

As teenagers, our lives were impulse and reaction. Our lives were filled with uncertainties and the insanity around us, and all we ever wanted people to know, after we'd walked out of a courtroom, was that we could be more than our crimes, one day - that rehabilitation is real. All we wanted was to believe that our lives could be more than a series of cell doors.

R. Dwayne Betts lives in Prince George's County and is the author of "A Question of Freedom." His e-mail is dbetts@campaign4youthjustice.org.

Source: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.rashid01nov01,0,203765.story

Updated November 13, 2009

New CNN video about Dwayne Betts. In "What Matters", Fredricka Whitfield reports on a former prison inmate, Dwayne Betts, and the positive changes he is making in his community.

"Myths of Get-Tough Law" by Professor Jeffrey Fagan

2009-11-02T12:10:00.000-05:00

Myths of Get-Tough Law

by Jeffrey Fagan
St. Petersburg Times
Monday, November 2, 2009

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum is defending the state's life without possibility of parole sentences for 13- and 16-year-olds against constitutional attack. But this isn't the first time McCollum has made history in the politics of juvenile justice. As a member of Congress in the 1990s, he promised the United States a "coming storm" of superpredators as a result of a population surge of kids from fatherless homes.

His 1996 warning was a world-class mistake. Juvenile homicide arrests promptly dropped in the United States by half. Yet anyone who thinks that a catastrophic statistical error like a phony crime wave would slow down McCollum needs to think again. In his brief before the Supreme Court in Graham vs. Florida, a constitutional challenge to laws permitting life sentences without the possibility of parole for very young minors, the attorney general now asserts that Florida's 30 years of get-tough legislation are the reason juvenile crime rates have fallen since the mid 1990s.

But this month's claim for deterrence is as phony as last decade's crime scare.

After mentioning a wide variety of Florida legislation after 1980, McCollum's brief says "these deliberative and focused strategies worked: violent crime rates plummeted from their 1990s highs both nationwide and in Florida." The statistical case he presents for cause and effect is that "serious violent offenses committed by juveniles aged 12-17 declined 61 percent from 1993 to 2005 nationwide" while "the rate of juvenile crime in Florida fell 30 percent from 1994 to 2004."

On its face, McCollum's claim suggests that youth crime in Florida declined more slowly than it did elsewhere. This is an odd endorsement for the state's tough juvenile sentencing laws.

The next thing that is remarkable about the state's position is that it presents no evidence that sentencing policies produced fewer crimes in the Sunshine State or anywhere else. The post-1980 legislation in Florida that McCollum embraces was also in place when Florida homicide rates shot up in the late 1990s, but his brief makes no assumptions that the harsh laws were the cause of Florida's bad news in that decade. Why, then, assume that any decline that happens at any time after the new laws passed was evidence that the laws worked?

Indeed, the Florida brief provides evidence that the state's legislative frenzy may actually be slowing down efforts at crime control. By McCollum's own calculations, the 30 percent juvenile crime decline in Florida is only half the more than 60 percent drop in the rest of the country. If these statistics are genuine indications of the impact of legislation, the "deliberative and focused strategies" in Florida have caused the state's juvenile crime reduction to badly trail the national average during the same time period. Using McCollum's data the way he is trying to use them, the real question is what is Florida doing so badly that its crime trends are only half as good the rest of the country?

Of course, tracing aggregate crime trends over long periods with no controls for other influences on crime is a silly way to test the impact of a particular sentencing policy. Real evidence requires sensitive measurements of the specific provisions of a criminal punishment. In the case before the Supreme Court, the policy McCollum is defending is a law that allows young teens to be sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole after criminal convictions. The true test of the effectiveness of this kind of law is whether states that provide this eternal imprisonment for juveniles experience lower proportions of violent crime among very young offenders than states that do not allow juveniles to suffer life without parole.

Our search of FBI crime totals for the distinctive patterns that would happen if the prospect of life without parole scared off juveniles not deterred by standard life sentences comes up empty. We find no evidence that any of the get-tough laws such as Florida's law produced significant crime declines among young teenagers in Florida or anywhere else. The young groups that Florida locks up forever do not make up a smaller proportion of violent crime in Florida and the other life without parole states than in the states that don't use life without parole for juveniles. This is where the tell-tale fingerprints of life without parole deterrence would be visible, but it doesn't happen. As extra prevention, juvenile life without parole is useless.

In a way, McCollum should be relieved that our careful analysis shows the life without parole policy has no effect. Taking the statistics presented in his brief seriously would suggest that Florida's celebrated crackdowns were reducing the crime decline benefits that other states are enjoying. The only bad effects we can demonstrate from Florida's brief in the Graham case are on legal argument and statistical logic.

Jeffrey Fagan is a professor of law and public health and director of the Center for Crime, Community and Law at Columbia Law School. Franklin E. Zimring is a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

Supreme Court Should Apply Roper Reasoning to Upcoming Juvenile Life-Without-Parole Cases

2009-10-29T23:23:00.003-04:00

Supreme Court Should Apply Roper Reasoning to Upcoming Juvenile Life-Without-Parole Cases

By Charles Ogletree

The United States Supreme Court will hold oral arguments on November 9 in two cases, Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida, which will determine whether it is cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to sentence an adolescent who committed a non-homicide offense to life in prison with no opportunity for release.

Petitioners Joe Sullivan and Terrance Graham were both sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for offenses that did not involve homicide in Florida. Sullivan was 13 years old when he was sentenced to spend the remainder of his natural life in prison. Graham received life without parole for a parole violation at 17 years old. He was sentenced without a trial.

Sullivan and Graham present an opportunity for the Court to affirm the reasoning put forth in Roper v. Simmons, which struck down capital punishment for juveniles. Roper established what every parent knows and what science confirms: adolescents are fundamentally different from adults in maturity and judgment.

The extensive body of research on adolescent development proves that adolescents have not reached the level of mental or emotional development that allows adults to make mature decisions, think through consequences, and control their impulses. This same developmental immaturity also makes adolescents the strongest candidates for rehabilitation as they grow older.

In Roper, the Court asserted that these significant developmental differences have direct bearing on the culpability of adolescents. The Court ruled that their immature judgment, impulsive decision-making, vulnerability to peer pressure, and inherent potential for rehabilitation reduce culpability such that sentencing them to death violates the Eighth Amendment.

These principles should be applied to the constitutionality of juvenile life-without-parole sentencing. The same transient qualities of adolescence that the Court relied upon in Roper make it similarly inappropriate to subject a teenager to a permanent punishment of life in prison without parole. It is cruel and inaccurate, as the Court has recognized, to pass a final and irreversible judgment on a person whose character is still forming and undergoing significant changes.

Every state acknowledges this relative immaturity of adolescents through civil laws mandating their differential treatment. States restrict adolescents from a wide range of activities that require more mature judgment, such as voting, driving, and consenting to sexual activity. In Florida, the State even restricts the age at which adolescents are allowed to get tattoos, operate golf carts, or attend professional boxing matches. Yet when it comes to criminal sanctions - such as those imposed on Sullivan and Graham - the State disregards this reasoning that young people are indeed categorically different.

The extreme rarity of the punishment shows that it is widely rejected by American society. Only six states are known to imprison juveniles for life without parole in non-homicide offenses. It has been eighteen years since any state sentenced a 13 year old to life without parole for a non-homicide offense. Sullivan is one of only two people in the entire country serving such a sentence. The total number of 13 and 14 year olds sentenced to life without parole for any offense over the last thirty years is 73. Florida is the only state nationwide with a first-time juvenile offender serving life without parole for armed burglary (Graham's offense). This kind of national repudiation has been recognized by the Court as a characteristic of cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. It should similarly be applied here.

Although not at issue before the Court, there is an appallingly disturbing component to these juvenile life-without-parole cases. Adolescents subjected to this punishment are disproportionately children of color. In fact, every single young person sentenced to life without parole for a non-homicide offense is a racial minority.

It is my hope that the Court follows its logic in Roper and acknowledges that these punishments must be tempered by an understanding that young people are categorically different in maturity and culpability.

Life-without-parole sentences were designed to deal with the most dangerous offenders who are beyond the pale of rehabilitation. Science, the Court's own precedents, and common sense all teach us that adolescents cannot reliably be categorized among the worst adult offenders. The Court ought to do away with this cruel and inappropriate sentence.

Charles Ogletree is Jesse Climenko Professor of Law & Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School. Ogletree submitted an Amicus brief in support of Petitioners with the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Source: http://www.acslaw.org/node/14555

"Giving Child Offenders a Chance" by Linda L. White

2009-10-28T22:27:00.002-04:00

Giving child offenders a chance

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

I was deeply moved by former senator Alan K. Simpson's Oct. 23 Washington Forum commentary, "A sentence too cruel for children," although I might be an unexpected person to be so moved. Twenty-three years ago, my daughter, then pregnant, was murdered by two 15-year-old boys. But in the years since her death, I have come to believe that sentencing teenagers to life in prison without the possibility of parole does not serve victims, offenders or public safety.

There is no reason to deny child offenders the opportunity to have their sentences reviewed after they have served a significant amount of time to see whether they have changed and matured. Only those who have demonstrated their growth and proved they are rehabilitated would be considered for parole. As Mr. Simpson's personal story shows, the potential for growth is enormous.

My family experienced unimaginable loss, but I still believe that young people -- even those who have done terrible things -- can be reformed. A permanent sentence should not be imposed on children whose characters are still forming.

And thank you to the senator for his candor in writing on this issue. His courage has served to strengthen my resolve to keep speaking out on this important matter.

Linda L. White, Magnolia, Tex.

The writer was among the signers of a friend-of-the-court brief in Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida, the two Supreme Court cases regarding the sentencing of juveniles.

"A Sentence Too Cruel for Children" by Alan Simpson

2009-10-23T12:42:00.001-04:00

A Sentence Too Cruel for Children

by Alan Simpson
The Miami Herald
Friday, October 23, 2009

Rather than serving in the U.S. Senate for almost 20 years, or having so many other wonderful life experiences, I could have served a longer sentence in prison for some of the stupid, reckless things I did as a teenager. I am grateful to have gotten a second chance -- and I believe our society should make a sustained investment in offering second chances to our youth.

When I was a teen, we rode aimlessly around town, shot things up, started fires and generally raised hell. It was only dumb luck that we never really hurt anyone. At 17, I was caught destroying federal property and was put on probation. For two years, my probation officer visited me and my friends at home, in the pool hall, at school and on the basketball court. He was a wonderful guy who listened and really cared. I did pretty well on probation. At 21, though, I got into a fight in a tough part of town and ended up in jail for hitting a police officer.

I spent only one night in jail, but that was enough. I remember thinking, ``I don't need too much more of this.''

I had a chance to turn my life around, and I took it. This term, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether other young people get that same chance.

On Nov. 9, the court will hold oral argument in Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida, two cases that will determine whether it is constitutional to sentence a teenager to life in prison without parole for a crime that did not involve the taking of a life. There is a simple reason the criminal justice system should treat juveniles and adults differently: Kids are a helluva lot dumber than adults. They do stupid things -- as I did -- and some even commit serious crimes, but youths don't really ever think through the consequences. It's for this reason that every state restricts children from such consequential actions as voting, serving on juries, purchasing alcohol or marrying without parental consent.

The Supreme Court recognized the differences between teenagers and adults when it held a few years ago, in Roper v. Simmons, that it was unconstitutional to impose the death penalty on defendants younger than 18. Locking up a youth for the rest of his life, with no hope for parole, is surely unconstitutional for the same reasons. The person you are at 13 or 17 is not the person you are at 30, 40 or 50. Everyone old enough to look back on his or her teenage years knows this.

Peer pressure is a huge part of youth behavior, whether one grows up in Washington, D.C., or Cody, Wyo. The guys will say, ``Go get the gun. We'll pick up just enough money for tonight.'' And almost unthinkingly, you'll do it. There is simply no way to know at the time of sentencing whether a young person will turn out ``good'' or ``bad.'' The only option is to bring him or her before a parole board -- after some number of years -- and give the person the chance to declare, ``I'm a different person today'' -- and then prove it.

Parole boards can examine how youth offenders spent their time in prison. Did they read books or work in the library? Did they make furniture? Get a college degree? Those are critical questions for review.
If at that review 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.

We all know youths who have changed for the better. When I was a lawyer in Cody, the court sometimes appointed me to represent juvenile offenders, and parents who knew of my history often asked for help with their children. I once handled the case of an 18-year-old who stole a car and drove it to Seattle. I later hired him as chief of staff for my Senate office, and he turned out to be one of the most able of the people I put in that job.

I was lucky that the bullets I stole from a hardware store as a teenager and fired from my .22-caliber rifle never struck anyone. I was fortunate that the fires I set never hurt anyone. I heard my wake-up call and listened -- and I went on to have many opportunities to serve my country and my community.

When a young person is sent ``up the river,'' we need to remember that all rivers can change course.

Alan Simpson, a Republican, was a U.S. senator from Wyoming from 1977 to 1996. He is among former juvenile offenders who have submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the petitioners in Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida.

Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/inbox/story/1296814.html

"Second Chances" by Raphael B. Johnson

2009-10-17T09:39:00.011-04:00

Second Chances

by Raphael B. Johnson
Newsweek
October 16, 2009

At 17 I was captain of my high-school football team and on my way to college. But in November 1992 I went to a birthday party with friends. We were tussling around, and the chaperones threw us out. One of them knocked me to the ground, and I felt ashamed and angry. My friend had a gun in his car. I got it, came back, and fired three shots, killing one of the chaperones. I was convicted of murder and given 10 to 25 years in prison.

I grew up in an area known for gun violence and drugs. Like a lot of boys, I looked up to tough men who could fight and had been in prison. My first arrest came when I was 12: I stole my grandmother's gun and took it to school. At 14 I was sent to a boys' home. I studied hard and won a full scholarship to attend the University of Detroit high school. I excelled there, but my thinking was twisted. I didn't know how to manage my anger. As a result, a man lost his life the night of that party.

On the day I was to begin Marygrove College, I started a prison term instead. I was 18 and had hope: I could be paroled when I was still a relatively young man. I spent six of my 12 years in prison in solitary confinement. I promised myself I would read 1,000 books. I read 1,300. I became certified as a carpenter, plumber, electrician, and paralegal.

I was released from prison in 2004 after my third parole hearing. I received bachelor's and master's degrees from University of Detroit Mercy. I started a motivational-speaking and fitness-training company. As a community-reintegration coordinator, I help other ex-offenders start anew. I'm proof that people, especially teens, can't be judged by the worst thing they ever did.

There are countless examples of former juvenile offenders like myself who, given the opportunity to be contributing members of society, have done great things. Former senator Alan Simpson committed a serious federal offense as a juvenile (destroying government property) but became a GOP leader. Terry Ray was a violent repeat offender but became an assistant U.S. attorney. Charles Dutton was convicted of manslaughter at 17 but became a respected actor and director. Dozens of studies show that overwhelming majorities of juvenile offenders mature out of committing crimes.

Next month the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida, two cases that will decide if it's constitutional to sentence teens to life in prison without parole. The court should give people like me a reason to keep improving themselves. Individuals who have committed crimes as teens should be allowed to have their sentences reviewed. Teenagers change. Adolescents, even more than adults, have enormous capacity for redemption. I know.

Johnson recently won a primary election for the Detroit city council.

Source: http://www.newsweek.com/id/218110

Below is Raphael's acceptance speech for being awarded Community Organizer of the Year at the 2008 Steve Harvey Hoodie Awards. The Hoodie Awards honors local business establishments, community leaders, churches and high schools nation wide for their contributions and excellence in the community. The event was held on September 20, 2008 at the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas, NV.

U.S. Supreme Court to Consider Juvenile 'Lifers'

2009-09-28T07:16:00.001-04:00

by David G. Savage

September 28, 2009

Reporting from Washington - Joe Sullivan was 13 years old when he and two older boys broke into a home, where they robbed and raped an elderly woman. After a one-day trial in 1989, Sullivan was sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole.

Terrance Graham was 16 when he and two others robbed a restaurant. When he was arrested again a year later for a home break-in, a Florida judge said he was incorrigible. In 2005, Graham received a life term with no parole.

The two young convicts represent an American phenomenon, one the Supreme Court is set to reconsider in the fall term that opens Oct. 5. At issue is whether it is cruel and unusual punishment to imprison a minor until he or she dies when the crime does not involve murder.

According to Amnesty International, "The United States is the only country in the world that does not comply with the norm against imposing life-without-parole sentences on juveniles."

Nearly all of the estimated 2,500 U.S. prisoners serving life terms for juvenile crimes, the group said, were guilty either of murder or of participating in a crime that led to a homicide. But 109 inmates are serving life sentences for other crimes committed when they were younger than 18.

Sullivan's and Graham's lawyers do not claim the young men deserve to go free.

"We are not asking for Mr. Graham to be released any time soon," attorney Bryan Gowdy said. "We are asking the court to declare unconstitutional a sentence of life without parole for these crimes. It would be entirely different if Mr. Graham had a meaningful opportunity for parole."

The question will be an early test of whether Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a former prosecutor, will align herself with the court's tough-on-crime conservatives or join with its liberals to strike down prison policies perceived as going too far.

Sullivan’s and Graham’s cases will be heard in November. Many lawyers and prosecutors said that until the Supreme Court agreed this year to take up the issue, they were unaware of juveniles receiving such sentences.

Sullivan, now 33, has been in prison for 20 years. The Florida appeals court and the state Supreme Court refused to review his sentence. When his case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, Florida Atty. Gen. Bill McCollum said the appeal should be dismissed on the grounds that it was too late to raise the issue of cruel and unusual punishment.

A lawyer for Graham has called his client's life sentence freakish and unfair. A second youth who participated in the restaurant robbery hit an employee with a club. He was later arrested for robbing a gas station and sentenced to three years in prison. He has since been released.

Florida leads the nation in sending teenagers to prison for life with no possible parole for crimes such as burglary, assault or rape. It has at least 77 such inmates. California and six other states also have at least one.

"This is a hidden group. They don't get a lot of attention because there was no homicide," said Paolo Annino, a law professor at Florida State University who has compiled national data on these prisoners.

California officials said they were unaware of having four such inmates until they checked their database at Annino's request. Two years ago, California joined many other states in prohibiting the sentencing of young offenders to life in prison.

But that measure did not affect inmates who had already been sentenced.

Annino and others point to two trends in the 1980s that led to juveniles serving life terms. First was the national move to abolish parole, reflecting fears that violent criminals could not be safely released. Second was the increased prosecution of young criminals as adults.

In defense of its life-in-prison policy, Florida's lawyers have pointed to several deadly attacks on European visitors carried out by young criminals.

These violent incidents were "threatening the state's bedrock tourism industry," Florida's lawyers said in the opening paragraph of their brief to the Supreme Court in the Graham case.

david.savage@latimes.com

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-preview28-2009sep28,0,1454652.story

Amicus Briefs in Pending Juvenile Life Without Parole U.S. Supreme Court Cases

2009-09-27T08:43:00.000-04:00

The following are merit briefs and all the amicus briefs that were filed in the cases Graham v. Florida, Docket No. 08-7412 and Sullivan v. Florida, Docket No. 08-7621, currently being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the Graham case the U.S. Supreme Court will consider the question, "Whether the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments prohibits the imprisonment of a juvenile for life without the possibility of parole as punishment for the juvenile's commission of a non-homicide."

In the Sullivan case the U.S. Supreme Court will consider the following two questions, "Joe Sullivan is serving a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for a non-homicide offense committed when he was thirteen years old. Nationwide, only one other thirteen-year-old child has received a life-without-parole sentence for a non-homicide. The questions presented are:

1. Does imposition of a life-without-parole sentence on a thirteen-year-old for a non-homicide violate the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, where the freakishly rare imposition of such a sentence reflects a national consensus on the reduced criminal culpability of children?

2. Given the extreme rarity of a life imprisonment without parole sentence imposed on a 13-year-old child for a non-homicide and the unavailability of substantive review in any other federal court, should this Court grant review of a recently evolved Eighth Amendment claim where the state court has refused to do so?"

Graham v. Florida, Docket No. 08-7412

Merit briefs

Amicus briefs

Sullivan v. Florida Docket No. 08-7621

Merit briefs

Amicus briefs

Source: http://www.abanet.org/publiced/preview/briefs/nov09.shtml

Mental Health America Adopts Policy Opposing Life Sentences Without Parole For Juveniles

2009-09-16T22:49:00.004-04:00

Mental Health America Adopts Policy Opposing Life Sentences Without Parole For Juveniles

Contact: Steve Vetzner, (703) 797-2588 or svetzner@mentalhealthamerica.net

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (September 16, 2009)-Mental Health America has adopted a strong policy opposing sentences of life without parole for juvenile offenders, calling such punishment "inconsistent with any of the purposes which ordinarily guide sentencing."

The policy was adopted by Mental Health America's Board of Directors at its September meeting. The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether such sentences are cruel and unusual punishment this term.

The United States is one of the few countries in the world that sentences juveniles to life without parole. In 42 states and under federal law, children who are too young to legally buy cigarettes are being tried for crimes as adults and if convicted can be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

There are currently at least 2,500 youthful offenders serving life without parole in U.S. prisons. Nationally, 59 percent of these individuals received their sentences for their first ever criminal conviction. Sixteen percent were between the ages of 13 and 15 when they committed their crimes, and 26% were sentenced under a felony murder charge where their offense did not involved carrying a weapon or pulling a trigger.

"Sentencing, including sentencing to imprisonment, has long been guided by four considerations: deterrence, retribution, incapacitation and rehabilitation. None of these purposes are served by sentencing juveniles to life without parole," the policy position states.

"Victims of child abuse and neglect are over-represented among incarcerated juveniles, including those serving life without parole. Studies of this population also consistently demonstrate a high incidence of mental health and substance use disorders, serious brain injuries, and learning disabilities. In many instances, these juveniles have not received adequate diagnostic assessments or interventions."

The policy also notes that such sentences violate international law and the Convention of the Rights of the Child, which has been ratified by every country in the world, except Somalia and the United States.

Mental Health America is also encouraging its more than 300 affiliates to work to repeal laws in those states which permit a sentence of life without parole. And it urges mental health advocates, professionals and other service providers work to ensure that juveniles are provided with appropriate services while incarcerated whose goal is to identify and ameliorate those problems which may have led to the crime and which need to be addressed before release will be safe and appropriate.

Celebrating 100 years of mental health education and advocacy, Mental Health America is the country's leading nonprofit dedicated to helping all people live mentally healthier lives. With our more than 300 affiliates nationwide, we represent a growing movement of Americans who promote mental wellness for the health and well-being of the nation-every day and in times of crisis. In 2009, we are marking a century of achievement with a year-long Centennial Observance: "Celebrating the Legacy, Forging the Future."

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Source: http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/index.cfm?objectid=C354FC1C-1372-4D20-C8ED5DA84C977A6A

Mich. to Rethink Teen Life Sentence

2009-09-14T23:14:00.001-04:00

House committee considers bills amid 'emotional testimony'

by Karen Bouffard
Detroit News Lansing Bureau
Monday, September 14, 2009

Lansing -- Michigan is among a growing number of states reconsidering whether juveniles should be sentenced to life behind bars with no chance of parole.

The trend has been spurred by scientific evidence that shows teens' brains are not fully developed, leaving them vulnerable to impulsive actions and poor choices.

Teens can be sentenced to mandatory life in prison without parole in most states. But Colorado, Kansas, Kentucky, New Mexico, Oregon and Texas have outlawed such sentences.

The Michigan House Judiciary Committee is considering bills that would allow those serving such sentences to be considered for parole, or ban such sentences. Two hearings have been held so far, and the committee plans to propose a package of bills addressing the issue later this fall, according to Rep. Mark Meadows, D-East Lansing, the committee chairman.

"It was very emotional testimony -- we had victims' families testify, prosecutors testify, relatives of children in prison testify," Meadows said.

Citing scientific evidence about teens' brain development, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that the sentencing of people to death for crimes they commit before age 18 is unconstitutional.

Child advocates have seized upon that ruling as a basis to challenge mandatory life sentences for teens, and the Supreme Court is poised to hear two such cases in November.

That argument doesn't hold water with Charles D. Stimson, a senior legal fellow with the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.--based conservative think tank that published in August the book "Adult Time for Adult Crimes: Life Without Parole for Juvenile Killers and Violent Teens."

According to Stimson, the Supreme Court made its ruling partly because life sentences without parole provide a sufficient consequence for the most heinous crimes committed by teens. Eliminating such sentences would leave courts with few options for dealing with society's most dangerous teen criminals.

"We do have a juvenile crime problem in the U.S. that is much worse than in the rest of the world," Stimson said. "It's a matter for the states to decide."

Source: http://www.detnews.com/article/20090914/METRO/909140326

Teen Lifers a Burden for State's Prisons

2009-09-14T22:45:00.002-04:00

Mich. ranks second in number of young killers behind bars

by Karen Bouffard
Detroit News Lansing Bureau
Monday, September 14, 2009

Lansing-- Michigan's high number of teens sentenced to life in prison without parole has child advocates questioning laws that give judges that option.

Behind bars are 346 teens who are serving life without parole for crimes they committed between the ages of 14 and 17, according to the Department of Corrections.

A study by the University of Texas says Michigan has the second most such inmates in the country. The report also says Michigan is among the harshest in the way it treats teens accused of major crimes.

Michigan's laws are unusual in that they allow juvenile judges to impose adult penalties on children too young to be transferred to adult criminal court, according to the report by the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs.

"Children simply aren't as culpable as adults because their brains aren't fully developed yet, and they are much more capable of rehabilitation," said Michele Deitch, an adjunct professor at the University of Texas and principal investigator of the study.

The number of teens sentenced to life in Michigan could climb following a recent rash of crimes in Metro Detroit that police say were committed by teens. In one of the more high-profile incidents, 12-year-old Demarco Harris is charged with shooting a 24-year-old woman to death as she sat in her car on West Outer Drive. His preliminary exam is set for Sept. 25.

Harris was charged as a juvenile, but with "adult designation" -- meaning Judge Leslie Kim Smith, who will oversee his trial in Wayne County Juvenile Court, has wide discretion when it comes to sentencing. If Harris is found guilty, he can be charged as a juvenile or an adult, or the judge can opt to review his conduct at age 19 and resentence him as an adult or juvenile.

If sentenced as an adult, Harris could face life in prison with no chance for parole.

The option to sentence juveniles as adults is "harsh" treatment, the study's authors said. Michigan's guidelines -- unlike most states' -- require a child who is convicted as an adult of first-degree murder to receive the same sentence as an adult: mandatory life in prison without parole.

The report, released this summer, gave Michigan the dubious distinction, along with three other states -- Pennsylvania, Florida and South Carolina -- of having children most likely to end up in adult prisons, because of mandatory sentencing laws and the ease of transferring juveniles into the adult system or imposing adult sentences.

One of the most notorious cases of a juvenile being prosecuted as an adult was that of Nathaniel Abraham of Pontiac, who was 11 in 1997 when he fatally shot Ronnie Greene Jr.

Abraham was convicted of murder as an adult at age 13 under a new sentencing law that allowed the judge to sentence him as an adult or a juvenile. Judge Eugene Athur Moore sentenced him to eight years in a juvenile facility.

Abraham, now 22, was sentenced in January to four to 20 years for drug trafficking.

'Cheapens value of life'

Advocates argue young teen criminals should get a second chance, as Abraham did. But many prosecutors and victims' relatives say some youths' crimes are so horrific that justice can be served only by a life sentence.

Greg King would agree. His daughter, 18-year-old Michigan State University student Karen Ann King, was at home in Saginaw visiting her parents on Jan. 3, 1997, when she was carjacked, kidnapped, raped, tortured and finally strangled by 15-year-old Shytour Williams and his cousin August McKinley Williams, 18, a prison parolee. Both were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole.

"Thinking (of freeing them) cheapens the value of my daughter's life," said Greg King. "The murderers get to see their families, talk to their families, receive gifts from their families -- and now we want to let them go. Myself and my family can only visit my daughter Karen at her gravesite."

The Texas study raises policy questions as Michigan is moving to deplete its prison population to reduce costs.

As Michigan faces a $2.8 million deficit for the budget year starting Oct. 1, Gov. Jennifer Granholm has shut prisons and paroled about 3,000 more prisoners than usual to shave $120 million in costs. Granholm has commuted more prison sentences than any other governor since at least 1969 -- 100 in less than seven years, compared with 35 during Gov. John Engler's 12 years in office.

The question becomes 'why'

After 29 years in prison, Henry Hill Jr., 45, claims he has been rehabilitated by the state Department of Corrections. He got life without parole for a shooting in Saginaw's Veterans Memorial Park in 1980, when he was 16.

Though a court-appointed psychologist found Hill to have the educational level of a third-grader when he entered the system, he attained his GED, earned certificates in several skilled trades and has finished several college classes. At Thumb Correctional Facility in Lapeer, which houses 770 adults and 440 youthful offenders in separate wings, he tries to act as a mentor for teenage felons.

Prison Warden Patricia Barnhart said some of those housed at her facility, who as teens were sentenced to life, could safely be released back into the community.

"Absolutely," she said. "The question becomes: Are you scared of them, or are you mad at them? When we're locking up people because we're mad at them, we're compromising our resources."

Mike Thomas, the prosecuting attorney in Saginaw County, said the focus should not be on whether kids should be jailed with adult sentences, but rather why kids are committing the crimes.

"To me, that's much more important to deal with than whether a teen should get life without parole for killing," said Thomas, whose county has put more teens behind bars with no chance of parole than any other in the state.

"The question the Legislature should be dealing with is why are these kids doing this stuff," he said.

Source: http://www.detnews.com/article/20090914/METRO/909140348/Teen-lifers-a-burden-for-state-s-prisons

Michigan Juvenile Justice Collaborative Legislative Day on September 22, 2009

2009-08-25T13:16:00.002-04:00

Far too many of Michigan's most vulnerable children - particularly those affected by trauma, abuse, neglect, mental illness and disability - either drift into or are referred into a juvenile justice system that is inappropriate and ill equipped to serve their needs.

The Michigan Juvenile Justice Collaborative will work to advance policies and practices that prevent delinquency, promote rehabilitation, and support transitional services for youth involved in the juvenile justice system and will raise awareness about the need for best practices that are equitable and just.

Click here to register for the MJJC Legislative Day on September 22!

Join The Future of Children Executive Director Elisabeth Donahue to learn what top scholars are saying about juvenile justice reform. Donahue will share findings from the Fall 2009 issue of The Future of Children, Juvenile Justice, edited by expert Laurence Steinberg with contributions from nine respected academics in this field. This well-received volume examines juvenile justice policies and practices with the goal of promoting reforms that are 1) based on solid evidence and 2) acknowledge that adolescents differ from adults in ways that policy ought to take into account.

The volume and its companion brief, “Keeping Adolescents out of Prison,” conclude that the “get-tough” reforms implemented during the past two decades have been both unnecessarily costly and of questionable effectiveness, and offer alternatives – policies that have not only been proven effective, but save taxpayer dollars as well.

Click here to read: An Investment Strategy for Michigan's At-Risk Youth: MJJC's 2009 Priorities

Strategies:

Prevention - Provide families and communities with the resources to properly care for and educate Michgan's children, particularly those who have experienced abuse and neglect and those with special needs.
Intervention - Address the needs of youth in the justice system in a way that is developmentally-appropriate, strength-based, and individualized to meet the unique needs of each child.

Reintegration - Assist youth who are transitioning from out-of-home placement back to their home communities by establishing necessary supports for housing, education, employment and other services.

Equity - Draw attention to the disproportionate number of youth of color within the juvenile justice system and pursue strategies to reduce disproportionality and ensure equitable access to resources and culturally competent services.

Outreach and Education - Participate in opportunities to educate juvenile justice and child welfare stakeholders about emerging research and best practices.

Source: http://www.miccd.org/juvenile_justice.php

Children Given One Strike: A Lifetime Without Redemption

2009-08-08T09:30:00.002-04:00

This video deals with the issue of sentencing juveniles to life without possibility of parole (JLWOP). Pennsylvania has more juvenile lifers in its prisons than any other state in the USA.

The video features interviews with anti-JLWOP activist Anita Colón, whose brother is serving a life sentence, Philadelphia Public Defender Bradley Bridge, Esq., and Temple University Psychology Professor Dr. Laurence Steinberg.

Relying on reasoning such as that invoked by the United States Supreme Court in outlawing the death penalty for juveniles, Colón and Bridge urge citizens to contact their elected officials about changing the law.

From Time-Out to Hard Time: Young Children in the Adult Criminal Justice System

2009-07-29T20:18:00.002-04:00

AUSTIN, Texas, July 28, 2009 – Under flawed criminal justice policy that is inconsistent with evidence-based research, trying and sentencing young children as adults occurs with alarming frequency and devastating results, according to a first-ever policy research report on the subject released today by the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin.

The report, “From Time Out to Hard Time: Young Children in the Adult Criminal Justice System,” provides a comprehensive look at how the nation treats pre-adolescent children (primarily those age 12 and under) who commit serious crimes. The report analyzes the available data with regard to the transfer of young children to adult criminal court, documents the extremely harsh and tragic consequences that follow when young children go into the adult criminal justice system, profiles practices in states with particularly severe outcomes for these young children, looks at international practices and offers policy recommendations.

The report finds that more than half the states permit children age 12 and under to be treated as adults for criminal justice purposes. In 22 states, plus the District of Columbia, children as young as 7 can be prosecuted and tried in adult court where they would be subject to harsh adult sanctions, including long prison terms, mandatory sentences and placement in adult prisons. *

Four states stand out as providing the worst possible outcomes for pre-adolescent offenders, given the combination of transfer policies and adult sentencing laws and practices in those states: Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.

Professor Michele Deitch, the report’s lead author and an attorney who teaches juvenile justice policy at the LBJ School and the UT School of Law, emphasized the national significance of the report and its findings.
“State policies allowing for the prosecution of children in adult court contradict the consensus of the most up-to-date scientific research. The adult criminal justice system is a poor and dangerous fit in every way for these young kids,” Deitch said. “Children should be handled in the juvenile justice system, where they can obtain the rehabilitative services and programs necessary to help them become productive adults. Lawmakers must reconsider and reverse these punitive laws.”

Other key findings of “From Time Out to Hard Time: Young Children in the Adult Criminal Justice System” include:

• Every year, nearly 80 children age 13 and younger are judicially transferred to adult court. Between 1985 and 2004, 703 children age 12 and under, and 961 children age 13 were judicially transferred to adult court. The total number of young children in adult criminal court actually is much higher than this, as the data does not include the number of children sent to the adult system through automatic transfer laws or laws allowing prosecutors to file cases directly in adult court.

• Many of these young children are being treated as adults for relatively minor offenses. There are almost as many youth treated as adults for property crimes as for crimes against persons. Determinations about when and whether a young child will be treated as an adult are marked by extreme arbitrariness, unpredictability and racial disparities.

• On a single day in 2008, 7,703 children under age 18 were held in adult local jails and 3,650 in adult state prisons. In these adult facilities, the youth face vastly higher risks of physical and sexual assault and suicide than they would face in juvenile facilities. The youngest children are at particular risk.

• The United States is severely out of step with international law and practice. Most countries—including those Western nations most similar to the United States, countries in the developing world, Islamic nations, and even countries often considered to be human rights violators—repudiate the practice of trying young children as adults and giving them long sentences.

The report makes recommendations to national and state policymakers, including:

• Keep young children in the juvenile justice system. Access to the adult system must be restricted in several ways, including by raising the age for transfer, eliminating automatic-transfer laws and direct-file laws for young children, and creating reverse-transfer laws allowing criminal court judges to return children to juvenile court at any stage of processing.

• Disallow mandatory sentencing of young children in adult criminal court. Mandatory sentencing laws intended to apply to adults should be more flexible when applied to children who are transferred to adult court. Judges should have the discretion to take account of their youth and amenability to rehabilitation as mitigating circumstances.

• Always provide parole opportunities for young children transferred to the adult criminal justice system, regardless of sentence length. Children as young as 7 could receive a mandatory sentence of life without parole in Florida and Pennsylvania.

• Young children in the adult criminal justice system should be housed in juvenile facilities. Young children must not be mixed with the adult criminal population. Any adult correctional facility holding juveniles should be required to comply with professional standards and should be subject to independent oversight of the children’s confinement conditions.

* The 22 states (plus the District of Columbia) where children as young as 7 can be treated as adults are: Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. In addition, Kansas and Vermont set the age at 10, and Colorado, Missouri, and Montana allow 12 year olds to be transferred to adult court.

Contact: Susan Binford, 512-232-4006, susan.binford@austin.utexas.edu, or Michele Deitch, 512-328-8330, mydeitch@aol.com

Press:

The New York Times - 12 and in Prison - July 27, 2009

The Post and Courier - Study: S.C.'s treatment of 'kid criminals' worst in nation - July 28, 2009

Ultimo Segundo - Editorial: Condenação de crianças em sistema penal adulto gera debate - July 28, 2009

The Post and Courier - Long terms for young draw fire - July 29, 2009

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - Study: Incarcerating youths in adult prison leads to abuse, higher costs - July 29, 2009

Source: http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/news/story/856/

The Sentencing Project Releases National Report: 1 in 11 Prisoners Serving Life Sentences

2009-07-23T16:23:00.004-04:00

A new report released by The Sentencing Project finds a record 140,610 individuals are now serving life sentences in state and federal prisons, 6,807 of whom were juveniles at the time of the crime. In addition, 29% of persons serving a life sentence (41,095) have no possibility of parole, and 1,755 were juveniles at the time of the crime.

No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America represents the first nationwide collection of life sentence data documenting race, ethnicity and gender. The report's findings reveal overwhelming racial and ethnic disparities in the allocation of life sentences: 66% of all persons sentenced to life are non-white, and 77% of juveniles serving life sentences are non-white.

This report includes a large section that discusses the issue of juveniles serving life without parole sentences. Click here to view or download the report in PDF format.

Should Minors Ever Face Life Without Parole?

2009-07-07T00:05:00.003-04:00

Four years ago the high court decided no minor should face the death penalty. Now it's poised to determine if youths should face life without a chance of parole.

by Lewis Beale
Miller-McCune
July 7, 2009

The Supreme Court's 2005 decision in Roper v. Simmons struck down the death penalty for juveniles, citing the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. But that left another possible Eighth Amendment issue on the table: whether sentences of life without parole for juveniles are constitutional.

That question is now being considered on both the judicial and legislative levels. In the term beginning this October, the Supremes will hear two cases — one involving a 13-year-old sex offender, the other a 17-year-old probation violator present when a felony murder occurred — both aiming to challenge life-without-parole sentences for juveniles (known by the unwieldy acronym JLWOP). Concurrently, the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security has been gathering testimony on a bill that would mandate parole hearings for JLWOP prisoners. The bill covers federal cases and gives states a financial incentive to comply with its terms.

"There is so much attention on this issue right now," says Baylor Law School professor Mark Osler, who has testified in favor of the proposed House bill, H.R. 2289. "I think in part it's because you have groups doing a good job advocating on it, and the idea is becoming more and more prevalent — that instead of wholesale change, we are smoothing off the rougher edges of the justice system, and that includes a focus on children."

Opponents to a change suggest that a focus on the prisoners as children, and not offenders, is wrong-headed and ahistorical. In its brief before the Supreme Court in the 13-year-old sex offender case, the State of Florida Attorney General's Office wrote, "Outside the context of the death penalty, this Court has always examined whether a sentence is grossly disproportionate under the Eighth Amendment by examining the sentence in relation to the offender's instant offense and prior offenses, not the individual characteristics of offender, such as age or mental capacity."

But the historical precedence is under assault.

"Juvenile crime has been going down, so people are starting to use that as political cover to raise the issue of why we have these overly punitive juvenile justice policies in place," said Ashley Nellis of the Sentencing Project. "And it's just a good time to be re-examining policies fiscally because incarceration is expensive, and life sentences are the most expensive."

The United States is one of the few countries that hand out JLWOP sentences. A 2005 Amnesty International study found that life without parole for juveniles is theoretically available in a dozen countries, but besides the U.S., only three others actually had teens serving such sentences — Israel with seven, South Africa with four and Tanzania with one.

In contrast, Sentencing Project Executive Director Mark Maurer noted in his testimony before the House subcommittee that 2,500 U.S. teenagers are incarcerated with no hope of release, most of them people of color. A majority of these — as many as 60 percent — are first-time offenders, and more than one quarter were convicted of felony murder, meaning they were participating in a crime when a murder occurred, but didn't do the actual killing.

"That's typical in a juvenile case where they are hanging out with older kids," Nellis says. "They don't realize they will do something bad, someone dies, and they wind up with life without parole."

An example of this is the case of Rebecca Falcon, a Florida 15-year-old who in 1997 hailed a cab with a gun-toting 18-year-old friend. The driver was shot in the head and died. Although it was never established in court who pulled the tri gger — the teens accused each other — because Falcon was on the scene, she was sentenced to life without parole.

JLWOP sentences contravene several international treaties, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child (which has been ratified by every country except the U.S. and Somalia), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (which the U.S. has signed) and a 2007 U.N. General Assembly resolution calling on all nations to abolish the juvenile death penalty and JLWOP (the vote was 176-1, the U.S. dissenting).

Despite the international momentum, the U.S. is just beginning to discuss the issue. One reason, says Nellis, is the ongoing fear the public has about so-called "bad seed" children in their midst.

"There was this tough-on-crime perspective that dominated in the '90s," she says, "and you can see this in laws that moved juveniles into the adult system. There was also this public outcry promoted by politicians that there was this super predator, that laws needed to be toughened to deal with this kind of juvenile."

Professor Osler adds that because many of these JLWOP sentences are "concentrated in a few states — California, Pennsylvania, Michigan — and they're not the states you'd expect [meaning places like Texas, with its high adult execution rate] ... my suspicion is that there was a political moment where that seemed like the answer to a problem, whether it was youth violence or gangs."

The trouble here is that these sentences send a message that the juvenile, no matter how young, is irredeemable, and that, Osler says, "is the argument you hear over and over, that there's no hope for change based on what we saw them do."

Yet this kind of thinking is contradicted by research, which has found that adolescent brains are undeveloped in areas associated with impulse control, emotional response, risk assessment and moral reasoning. Which means, says Bryan A. Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, who testified on hearings about H.R. 2289, that "young teens experience widely fluctuating emotions and vulnerability to stress and peer pressure without the adult ability to resist impulses and risk-taking behavior or the adult capacity to control their emotions."

In fact, some social scientists believe full emotional and moral maturity doesn't occur until people are in their 20s, which means an incarcerated teenager, given the proper counseling and rehabilitation (a big if), could conceivably mature into a responsible adult.

This is what H.R. 2289 is trying to take into account. The bill would mandate that every JLWOP prisoner "receives, not less than once during the first 15 years of incarceration, and not less than every three years thereafter, a meaningful opportunity for parole or other form of supervised release." States in noncompliance of this mandate would be penalized by a 10 percent cut in the anticrime funding they would normally receive under the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968.

While a number of high-profile organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and The Center for Law and Global Justice at the University of San Francisco School of Law have produced reports castigating the U.S. for its policies on JLWOP, and PBS's Frontline documentary series produced a 2007 piece, "When Kids Get Life," widely viewed as sympathetic to the cause, opponents of loosening sentences have stood their ground. Critics of the act, which include the National District Attorneys Association, claim it is yet another example of the federal government butting into state issues and lumps all JLWOP offenders into the same eligible-for-parole category no matter how heinous the offense.

"That [last argument] would make a lot more sense if you required a mandatory release date," Osler says. "This bill is just about parole, and a lot of people up for parole never get parole. If you have a kid in for 15 years, and he still has a lot of problems, that kid will not be released."

But as Santa Mateo County, Calif., District Attorney James P. Fox noted in his testimony, the mere fact that a juvenile was prosecuted as an adult suggests he or she already has a lot of problems.

"The unwritten but clear implication of this proposed legislation is that too many juvenile offenders are prosecuted and sentenced as adults in our country," he testified. "The reality is, in fact, quite the opposite. Very few juveniles are prosecuted and sentenced as adults in America, contrary to the unwritten implication of this proposed legislation and a public misperception driven in large part by sensationalistic media coverage of certain high-profile cases. Few jurisdictions in America prosecute more than 1 to 2 percent of juvenile criminal offenders as adults, and in some jurisdictions, this percentage is even lower. In those cases where adult-court prosecution does occur, the simple fact of the matter is that adult-court prosecution is clearly warranted in these instances."

No one knows if H.R. 2289 will become law (it has yet to be voted out of committee), but with the Democratic majority in Congress, it probably has a decent shot. In the meantime, the two cases coming before the Supreme Court will go a long way toward determining how this country deals with its juvenile criminals. Yet because of the significant differences between them, people like Nellis are predicting a split decision.

"My expectation is that they will answer two different questions," she says. "They may talk about juvenile life for very young ages in the Sullivan case [the 13-year-old sex offender], and they might deal with probation violations in the second case. We're hopeful that at the very least life without parole cannot be used in non-homicide cases."

Source: http://www.miller-mccune.com/legal_affairs/minors-life-without-parole-1319

Juvenile Justice Sabbath: Coming Together for Youth

2009-06-27T05:16:00.002-04:00

By Doris Benavides
Tidings Online
Friday, June 26, 2009

May 24 was the first time in 16 years that David Oropeza celebrated his birthday out of prison walls. He turned 35.

During his young adult years, David was in and out of prison. But two weeks ago, his eyes were wet with happiness as more than 50 parishioners of American Martyrs Church in Manhattan Beach sang "Happy Birthday."

Although spending all those years in prison, David was blessed with freedom, unlike thousands of other young men and women who, as teenagers, have been sentenced to life without a possibility of parole.

Last month's meeting at American Martyrs was held as part of the Juvenile Justice Sabbath, sponsored by Faith Communities for Families and Children (FCFC), a coalition of faith-based organizations, to raise awareness about the increasing numbers of youth who are treated like adults and are incarcerated and sentenced for life without parole in United States prisons.

The U.S. is the only country in the world where this is happening, according to advocates. They are hoping that state legislators will soon discuss and approve the Fair Sentencing for Youth Act SB399, which would allow the review of cases and resentencing of youth who have been incarcerated for more than 10 years and were sentenced to life without parole before the age of 18.

Some 2,574 inmates in the U.S. were sentenced to life without parole for crimes committed before the age of 18, according to Human Rights Watch, as reported recently in the Los Angeles Times. In California there are 250 such cases.

According to FCFC, in 2009 it is projected that California will spend more than 20 times as much per youth in state juvenile facilities than per public school students. In the U.S. about 200,000 youth under age 18 are tried in adult courts.

The Children's Defense Fund, in its report "Cradle to Prison Pipeline," reported an estimated 15,240 youth detained in juvenile correctional facilities in California in 2006. More than 75 percent of these have inadequately-addressed learning disabilities and mental health issues.

A multi-faith issue

During the Juvenile Justice Sabbath, spiritual leaders from about 200 Los Angeles synagogues, mosques, and Catholic churches addressed their congregations about this issue, which affects the entire society directly or indirectly.

"Our children are a priceless gift," Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, told about 300 men and women during his May 22 sermon at the Culver City Mosque.

"My love for my children should be the same for all children. This is the universality bestowed upon us. We should defend and honor the sanctity of our children at any time," he continued.

After providing statistics of children in the U.S. living in poverty, abused and neglected by society, lacking healthcare benefits, lacking the appropriate education and living under the basic nutrition standards, Syed asked the Muslim community to question themselves about where their priorities lie as part of this society.
There are "ethical disparities," he told them after mentioning there are a large number of youth incarcerated for life without parole in the prison system.

"In Wall Street no one has gone to jail, but a child goes because of lack of understanding," he said. He urged the congregation to check the FCFC's Web site to get informed about the issue, to visit and volunteer at places where they can become big brothers or big sisters for at-risk children, and to call their legislators to support the approval of SB399.

"Everyone should get a second chance," he affirmed.

Halima Shad said she was shocked after hearing her spiritual leader. She admitted that she had ignored the entire situation. She recently arrived to the U.S. from Germany, after marrying her American husband. She believes that instead of punishment, these teenagers should receive psychological treatment.

"What they are doing," she said, "is not justice."

"Children are innocent and they need to be protected," Syed told The Tidings after delivering his message.

'It's first about compassion'

"Jesus preached the good news for wholeness and joy," Jesuit Father Greg Boyle, told American Martyrs parishioners during his May 24 evening homily, one of the many homilies that closed the Juvenile Justice Sabbath weekend.

The founder of nonprofit Homeboy Industries, the largest gang intervention program in the U.S, told the packed church there is little possibility of change or justice when people separate from each other due to differences of skin color, or socioeconomic status.

At the same time, though, "God can't take his eyes off his kids," Father Boyle said. "God thinks we are great and reminds us we belong to each other."

After celebrating Mass, he and three former gang members addressed the group of parishioners at the church's O'Donnell Hall.

"If we don't believe that redemption is possible…. That's what Jesus is about," Father Boyle said. "It's not even about second chances, but it's first about compassion, standing in the right place with the poor, with the demonized."

He said everyone is called to work with gangs standing in awe rather than judgment and he stressed the importance of connecting. "If there is no connection, no kinship, it simply won't matter," he said.

"I'm blessed to speak here," said 21-year-old Treybon Thomas, who was locked up at the California Youth Authority at the age of 16. He addressed the parishioners together with Alicia Ruiz, 21, and Oropeza. The three advocated for teenagers who like them were raised in violent and emotionally unhealthy environments.
They are now under the wing of Homeboy Industries, learning to live a healthy lifestyle surrounded by family members, ex-gang members and the community.

The three of them said no change of life can happen inside any detention facility where teenagers are living with adults who take advantage of them.

"When you see them (gang members) on the street, they are scared of you as you are of them," Oropeza told the parishioners. He urged them to reach out to at-risk teenagers. "Don't judge a book by its cover. It sounds like cliche, but it is life today," he said.

He shared how he felt angry after a daughter was killed in a shooting between gangs, "but everybody deserves a chance, even those who killed my daughter," he said.

Acceptance, connection and recognition, were the words used by the three former gang members when asked by a parishioner what are the kind of words someone could use to make a neglected teenager change his/her mind.

"I would say talk with me not to me," said Oropeza. "It's simple as asking, 'How are you? How can I help you? What is your name?'" said the father of five whose wife, Cristina Villalba, works at Homeboy Industries' Homegirl Café.

Oropeza and Villalba are now fulfilling their roles as parents, teaching love to their children, something they lacked in their own youth. Cristina's mother died from an overdose and her husband's father also used drugs.

"My parents never told me they loved me and they did not care if I went to school or not," said Villalba.
"I want to show a better example and break that cycle that runs in our families," Oropeza added.

Javier Stauring, FCFC's director, urged the parishioners to seek information. "The more educated on this issue," he said," the better it is."

For more information about juvenile restorative justice and about the Faith Communities for Families and Children, go to www.fcfcla.org. For more information on SB399, go to www.fairsentencingforyouth.org.

Source: http://www.the-tidings.com/2009/062609/juvenile

Lift for Ban on Second Chances for Juvenile Prison Lifers

2009-06-19T05:26:00.003-04:00

Editorial

by Jeff Gerritt
The Detroit Free Press
Friday, June 19, 2009

Michigan has outlawed second chances for some juveniles, garnering international shame for imposing the maximum adult penalty -- life without parole -- for children as young as 14.

The time is right to end this unreasonable and inhuman law that, in effect, declares young people beyond redemption. Michigan's budget crisis is driving a series of overdue reforms in the state's bloated prison system, including closing prisons and reducing the number of inmates by 3,500 this year. The state could release at least some of its 346 juvenile lifers, saving millions of dollars a year. As Michigan Department of Corrections Director Patricia Caruso has said, we must recognize the difference between those we fear and those we are simply mad at.

Arguments made by some Michigan prosecutors that they use the juvenile lifer law judiciously and with discretion -- even if true -- are off point. Many prosecutors, hunting for votes, have not exercised restraint or judgment. The only way to keep some of them from unnecessarily throwing away the keys on a juvenile offender is to change the law.

Discretion in sentencing

This issue is about a lot more than money. There are serious moral and constitutional problems with sentencing juveniles to mandatory life sentences. That's why Congress convened a hearing last week on legislation to eliminate life-without-parole sentences for juveniles, and the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up two Florida cases challenging such sentences.

Michigan, too, is re-examining juvenile lifer laws that impose one-size-fits-all justice. Bills in the state House and Senate would eliminate mandatory life sentences for juveniles and restore parole eligibility to those serving such sentences.

I hope Michigan legislators have the stuff to bring juvenile laws in line with science, legal traditions and plain common sense. So far, it doesn't look good.

The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by state Rep. Mark Meadows, D-East Lansing, has already tacked on some debilitating amendments to the bills, including lowering the applicable age to 16 and under and increasing the minimum time served from 10 to 15 years. Excluding 17-year-olds, even though they are minors, would erase the possibility of parole for 129 of Michigan's 346 juvenile lifers.

The House committee might also, for the first time, require that prosecutors, judges and victims' families approve a parole hearing. If that happens, we might as well stick with what we have. Would any Michigan prosecutor running for re-election ever OK a hearing for anyone convicted of a homicide?

On the Senate side, State Sen. Wayne Kuipers, R-Holland, who heads the Judiciary Committee, would not commit even to giving the juvenile lifers bills a hearing when I talked to him last week. When corrections and criminal justice reform is dominating the public debate, no state legislator should prevent a hearing on an issue that the nation's highest court and governing body are taking on.

A chance for parole

These bills would not, as Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy wrote in the Free Press last week, unleash violent criminals. In fact, they would not, by themselves, release one juvenile lifer. They would only give them a chance at parole after serving 10 or 15 years, and some have already served decades.

Michigan's Parole Board is one of America's toughest. Few juvenile offenders would get released after their first hearing. Still, offering some hope of freedom would provide a powerful incentive for prisoners to act right and change. Without hope, people become dangerous, or spiritually dead.

Moreover, to paint all juvenile lifers as crazed killers is the kind of demagoguery that made America the world's leading incarcerator. Many juvenile lifers in Michigan didn't do the killing but were convicted for aiding and abetting. The case of Henry Hill Jr., whom I profiled last month, is typical. Hill, 45, of Saginaw, was running from the scene of a fight when his cousin shot and killed an 18-year-old. At 16, Hill was sentenced to mandatory life, and he has already served nearly 30 years in prison.

Hill told me he deserved to be punished harshly for his involvement in a crime that led to murder. But, three decades later, to throw away the keys on this mature, educated and spiritual man is irrational and inhuman.

The immaturity factor

Science has proved what all parents already know: Juvenile brains are more impulsive and unstable than those of adults. They don't have the same rights as adults, nor should they suffer the same penalities. That's why a conservative U.S. Supreme Court threw out the death penalty for juveniles and now could strike down life without parole.

People, especially young people, can change and contribute to society. But hundreds of juvenile offenders in Michigan prisons won't get that chance unless legislators and Gov. Jennifer Granholm lift the state's barbaric ban on second chances.

JEFF GERRITT is a Free Press editorial writer. Contact him at gerritt@freepress.com or 313-222-6585.

Source: http://www.freep.com/article/20090619/OPINION01/906190317/Lift+for+ban+on+second+chances+for+juvenile+prison+lifers

House Committee Debates Eliminating Life Without Parole Sentences for Youth

2009-06-12T09:54:00.000-04:00

by Michael Novinson
www.infoZine.com
Friday, June 12, 2009

Washington, D.C. - infoZine - Two middle-aged women, both victimized by the murder of a loved one, sat side-by-side during Tuesday's meeting of the House Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee.

But as for the issue at hand - ending the sentencing of juveniles to life without parole - the women's views are miles apart.

To the left sat Linda L. White, whose 26-year-old daughter was found dead in 1986 following a sexual assault by two 15-year-old boys. To the right sat Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, whose brother-in-law, sister and their unborn child were murdered in 1990 by a 17-year-old boy for the "thrill" of it.

White, who lives near Houston, became a death educator and grief counselor after her daughter was murdered and attended a meditated dialogue with Gary Brown, one of her daughter's murderers, in the early 2000's.

"Gary is proof that young people, even those who have done horrible things, can be reformed," said White, who is a member of the Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation.

Bishop-Jenkins, who lives near Chicago, also became an advocate for violence prevention. But her experience did little to brighten her perception of the prospects for reconciliation in most murder cases. In 2007, she co-founded the National Organization of Victims of "Juvenile Lifers" to protect victims' rights.

Personal coping mechanisms, experience with the criminal justice system and a broader sociopolitical worldview have combined to give the victims of the most heinous crimes dramatically different views on H.R. Bill 2289, the Juvenile Justice Accountability and Improvement Act of 2009.

This bill, sponsored by Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., would require states to grant parole hearings for youth murderers who are serving a life sentence during their first 15 years of incarceration and every three years thereafter. Any state that did not comply would be denied some federal anti-crime funding.

It is legal to sentences juveniles to life without parole in 44 states. But the use of such laws occurs in very concentrated areas - of the 2,574 youths currently serving life without parole, 44 percent reside in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Louisiana.

These states often require that first-degree murder and some other cases be transferred out of juvenile courts. Other states review a juvenile defendant's competency or capacity for rehabilitation before transferring a case. Twenty-eight states mandate sentencing offenders under age 18 to life without parole for certain crimes.

Proponents of H.R. 2289 rely on statistics to demonstrate the injustice of these sentences.

"The U.S. is the only nation on Earth to sentence its youth to die in prison," Scott said during the hearing.

Behavioral research by psychologists such as Laurence Steinberg of Temple University has found that the brain systems responsible for self-control do not fully develop until a person is in their early 20s. He argued in a written statement that youth offenders should not be punished as harshly as adults for comparable crimes. The bill's supporters argue that youths who commit crimes are more likely to be rehabilitated than adults and re-enter society as contributing members.

Opponents such as Bishop-Jenkins argue that H.R. 2289 would transfer the life sentence from the offenders to the victims by forcing them to regularly re-engage during parole hearings with the person who murdered their family member.

"To reopen this pain every three years, for the rest of our lives, and perhaps those of our children, is quite literally torture," she said.

Most legal and congressional opposition focuses on the federal government overreaching into state criminal justice systems. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, said the bill violates the principles of federalism that are at the heart of the American judicial system. Other Republican members of Congress at the hearing agreed.

"It's the federal government deciding that states don't matter," said Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif. "Maybe there are some changes that need to be made in individual states, but this is overwhelmingly over-the-top."

Indeed, some states have reconsidered their policy on this issue. Colorado and Kentucky recently banned sentencing youths to life without parole. And in Louisiana - which has 335 inmates sentenced as juveniles to life - the state House of Representatives proposed a bill that would enable a meaningful review of cases involving juvenile offenders.

Bishop-Jenkins dismisses White's situation as not representative of most juvenile murder cases. Yet even though the two women don't see eye-to-eye on H.R. 2289, both want the criminal justice system reformed.

Bishop-Jenkins said courts should have the discretion to transfer juvenile offenders to the adult system. That would reduce the number of juvenile life-without-parole sentences without subjecting victims such as herself to the trauma of constant parole hearings.

Source: http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/36250/

Focus More on Prevention

2009-06-11T08:07:00.000-04:00

Change state law to allow for second chances

by Sen. Liz Brater
The Detroit Free Press
June 11, 2009

There are more than 350 people in the Michigan prison system who were under age 18 when sentenced to spend the rest of their life in prison without the possibility of parole. Many of them were abused or neglected as children. Many had emotional disorders. Many committed crimes with older codefendants who received lesser sentences.

The United States stands alone in the industrialized world in allowing children to be sentenced to life without parole. Michigan ranks third among states that sentence children to life, just behind Pennsylvania and Louisiana.

A package of bills that I have introduced in the Michigan Senate (a similar, pared-down package has received hearings in the House) would prohibit sentencing a juvenile to life without parole. These bills do not release a single felon. They allow those who were already sentenced to life in prison without parole to go before the Parole Board to have their case reviewed after 10 years.

According to National Institute of Mental Health studies, the brain of an adolescent continues to develop through age 25. The area governing reasoning, advanced thought and impulse control matures last, often causing youths to make decisions based on impulse and emotion, rather than logic. The acknowledgement of this difference in maturity, understanding and logic is what led us to have a juvenile justice system to begin with.

There is no question that some of these children have committed heinous crimes. Each case needs careful review, and the safety of the public must be paramount. But how many of these crimes could have been prevented if an adequate mental health system were in place? We have heard numerous stories of parents recognizing that their child needed help, turning to the mental health system, and failing to get access to care.

Michigan law allows children to be tried as adults, with no minimum age. The prosecutor, rather than the judge, determines which youths will be tried as adults. Prosecutors are not the right people to make this decision. They like to run for re-election showing that they are "tough on crime." We need to revisit these laws also, and we should repeal them.

Prosecutors also argue that this sentence prevents the practice of adults sending teens to execute crimes, knowing that they will do little time. If children are being used in this way, let's prosecute and punish the adults exploiting them.

As a society, we have failed these kids. There are many early childhood education programs, including the Perry School in Ypsilanti, that are nationally recognized to reduce the chance that a child will end up in the criminal justice system in his or her teen years. These programs cost $10,600 per child, versus the $30,000 a year we spend per inmate. Similarly, community mental health care, at $8,000-$11,000 a year per client, depending on the county, is much more economical than prison.

This approach is not only more humane, it is also more cost effective for the taxpayers.

Liz Brater is a Democrat who represents Ann Arbor in the Michigan Senate.

Source: http://www.freep.com/article/20090611/OPINION05/906110362/Focus%2Bmore%2Bon%2Bprevention

The Most Direct Form of Scholarship

2009-06-11T02:13:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I had an experience several others here have already been through-- offering invited testimony before a congressional committee. In my case, it was at a hearing on H.R. 2289, which involved eliminating the sentence of life without parole for juveniles. I found the whole thing fascinating, as did two of my students who helped me prepare and attended the hearing. Though I have argued in many courtrooms, I am not sure I have ever appeared in a room quite so intimidating as that one (the hearing room for the House Judiciary Committee). The gallery was full, with people standing along the back wall at times, and the Representatives sat in tiers above us, in front of a line of aides who would pass them notes.

For those of us involved in policy work, it struck me as the most direct and efficient form of scholarship possible-- to present your case to the lawmakers, and answer their questions. This is especially true relative to the more traditional route, which involves spending months writing an article, more months waiting for it to appear, and then hoping a decision-maker might read it. The best method, of course, would be to combine the two by testifying in support of your scholarly research, and that is exactly the approach of some of the most effective witnesses before Congress.

Such testimony is not considered a form of scholarship in some places, but if what we care about is using our minds to improve the law, that orthodoxy should change.

--Mark Osler

Source: http://lsi.typepad.com/lsi/2009/06/the-most-direct-form-of-scholarship.html

Hearing on H.R. 2289, Juvenile Justice Accountability and Improvement Act of 2009

2009-06-10T20:08:00.000-04:00

On June 9, 2009, the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security (a division of the House Judiciary Committee) held a hearing to evaluate the Juvenile Justice Accountability and Improvement Act of 2009. Congressman Bobby Scott (D-VA), the chairman of the subcommittee and the sponsor of this piece of legislation, conducted the hearing and was the lone Democrat in attendance for the entire hearing. Other subcommittee members in attendance included, Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Ted Poe (R-TX), Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), and Daniel Lungren (R-CA). Democrat Mike Quigley was in attendance for part of the hearing but missed the questioning of the witnesses.

The Subcommittee met to evaluate H.R. 2289, a bill that would establish an opportunity for parole or similar release for child offenders sentenced to life in prison with out the possibility of parole. In 39 states in the country, and under federal law, teens who are too young to vote, buy cigarettes, or serve on the juries they appear before, can be tried as adults and convicted to juvenile life without parole (JLWOP). There are currently 2,484 persons in the U.S. serving sentences of life without parole for crimes committed as minors, while there are no youth serving JLWOP anywhere else in the world.

The Subcommittee called various individuals to testify, either in favor of ending juvenile life without parole sentences or against H.R. 2289, which would affect sentences currently being served across the country. The speakers included the following:

Mark Osler – Law Professor, BaylorLaw School in Texas
Linda White – Former Board Member of the Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation, Texas
Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins – Co-Founder National Organization of Victims of “Juvenile Lifers”, IL
Anita Colon – Pennsylvania State Coordinator for the National Campaign for Fair Sentencing for Children
James Fox – District Attorney in San Mateo County, California
Marc Mauer – Executive Director of Sentencing Project in Washington, DC

Chairman Scott emphasized early on that H.R. 2289 would not prohibit life sentences or release individuals currently serving sentences. Instead, the bill will provide a chance for individuals sentenced as juveniles to show they are “worthy” of parole. Chairman Scott also stressed the inconsistencies of the law, which recognize differences in maturity and mental capacity of juveniles under some circumstances, but toss aside such discrepancies when it comes to crimes.

Congressmen Gohmert, Lungren, Goodlatte, and Poe spoke out against the Act because of the effect it would have on a state’s exclusive control of sentencing. In some states, life without parole is mandatory for certain crimes, and this legislation would infringe upon the ability of those states to retain control over sentencing of offenders in their jurisdiction. Congressman Gohmert expressed that, though he personally finds it repugnant to sentence a juvenile to life without parole, it should be left to the states to make this decision.

The witnesses testifying varied in their opinions of H.R. 2289. Mark Osler, a former prosecutor, spoke on behalf of the merits of the bill and emphasized the importance of striking a balance between retributive justice and mercy. Linda White, the mother of a child killed and sexually assaulted by two fifteen-year-old boys, agreed with Osler. She testified that life without parole is too harsh a sentence for juveniles, and young people should be held accountable in a way that reflects age and the ability to change.

Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins told the story of her sister, who was killed by a juvenile currently serving a sentence of life without parole. She testified about the loss of evidence and inability to find witnesses for parole hearings if sentences change as a result of the bill. Additionally, she spoke of the need for victim notification, the traumatizing effect of parole hearings, and the notion that a “one size fits all” mandate would not work for sentencing across all states. After debating the merits of the bill with Chairman Scott, Bishop-Jenkins conceded that she would support the bill if it were prospective only, and focused on requiring states to eliminate mandatory transfers.

The Subcommittee did not reach a consensus on H.R. 2289 by the end of the hearing, with Chairman Scott maintaining his support of legislation to end juvenile life without parole sentences, and Congressmen Gohmert, Poe, Goodlatte, and Lungren keeping their position that sentencing decisions should be left to the states.

By: Ashlee Richman
(CJS Summer Intern Law Student from The Washington College of Law at American University)

You can view a video of the hearing which lasts an hour and twenty-seven minutes at: http://judiciary.edgeboss.net/real/judiciary/crime/crime060909.smi. You will need to download a free version of RealPlayer to view the video if you do not already have the program downloaded. You can download RealPlayer from http://tinyurl.com/o5zbvf.

Life Without Parole? Not for Children

2009-06-05T00:29:00.000-04:00

Baylor Law Professor Provides Expert Testimony Before Congress June 9

Baylor University News
June 4, 2009

Contact:
Jill Scoggins, Assistant Vice President, Media Communications
Office-254.710.1964 or Cell-254.652.9765
Follow us on Twitter: BaylorUMediaCom

WASHINGTON (June 4, 2009) - As the U.S. House Judiciary Committee holds hearings on proposed legislation to revise sentencing rules for children who are convicted of crimes for which they receive life without parole, the select list of invited experts providing testimony includes a Baylor University Law School professor.

On Tuesday, June 9, Mark Osler will testify before the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, discussing why H.R. 2289, the Juvenile Justice Accountability and Improvement Act of 2009, should be enacted into law. Sponsored by Rep. Robert Scott of Virginia and co-sponsored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the bill calls for regularly scheduled parole review for child offenders sentenced to life.

Currently, the United States is one of only two countries in the world known to sentence offenders under aged 18 to life without parole. More than 2,500 youth offenders are currently serving such sentences in the U.S., and the estimated rate at which the sentence of life without parole is imposed on children nationwide remains at least three times higher today than it was 15 years ago. Black children are 10 times more likely to receive a life-without-parole sentence than white children.

"More than half of the juveniles who receive life without parole are first-time offenders, and many are in prison for crimes short of murder," Osler says. "Interestingly, the only other country which hasn't signed a convention outlawing such sentences is Somalia. So, it's us and the country that supports pirates. Is that really the kind of company the United States wants to keep?"

Historically, courts in the United States have recognized the undeniable differences between adult and youth offenders, and Osler says life with no chance of parole denies those differences.

"I'm a former prosecuting attorney, so I believe in punishment," Osler says. "Justice is never achieved without punishment.

"At the same time, there must be a balance between justice and mercy. Cases where child offenders are sentenced to life with no possibility of parole completely push mercy out of the picture."

Life without parole also removes a chance for redemption, Osler says. "Redemption also must be a possibility in sentencing. As a Christian, I see the person - the offender - separate from the evil he or she may commit. As a legal professional, I know very well that rehabilitation can fail, and can be very expensive. However, adults - particularly those of us who are people of faith - have an obligation to try to rehabilitate children who have committed crimes.

"All children deserve a chance to grow into productive adults - even those who have committed a crime as a child."

Recent Baylor Law School graduate Kaye Johnson and current second-year Baylor Law student Chris Rusek will make the trip from Waco, Texas, to Washington with Osler. The two received some real-world experience in working with Osler on the research for his testimony.

"Scholarship must relate to teaching, and vice versa," says Osler. "I always include students in the work I perform outside the classroom to show them the real impact the legal profession has on our world."

Osler will testify at 2:30 p.m., June 9, in room 2141 of the Rayburn House Office Building. Additional information on the hearing can be found on the House Judiciary Committee web site.

About Mark Osler, J.D.

Mark Osler is a professor of law at Baylor Law School in Waco, Texas. A graduate of Yale Law School and a former federal prosecutor, he is an expert on sentencing whose work has consistently confronted problems in the federal sentencing guidelines. Most recently, as lead counsel, he won the case of Spears v. United States (2009) in the U.S. Supreme Court, where the Court held that sentencing judges can categorically reject the 100:1 ratio between crack and powder cocaine in the federal sentencing guidelines. Justice John Paul Stevens quoted Osler in the seminal case of United States v. Booker (2005), which struck down the mandatory guidelines. As an appellate attorney, Osler has briefed or argued cases in six federal courts of appeal and in the Supreme Court. He serves as the head of the Association of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools, and often lectures on issues relating to sentencing, ethics and faith and the law. His work on one case is portrayed in the Samuel Goldwyn Film, "American Violet," where the character of "Professor Joe Fischer" is based on Osler's role in working with a former student to address suspect practices by a District Attorney. His book, Jesus on Death Row, (Abingdon Press, 2009) challenges the death penalty based on the experience of Christ as a criminal defendant. He has also authored more than 20 academic articles, and has been interviewed as a sentencing expert on NPR's "Morning Edition" and ABC's "Good Morning America." Prior to joining Baylor in 2000, Osler clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Jan E. DuBois in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, was an associate with the law firm Dykema Gossett in Detroit, and served five years as Assistant United States Attorney in Detroit.

Source: http://www.baylor.edu/pr/news.php?action=story&story=59227

Worthy Opposes Bills to Parole Juvenile Lifers

2009-05-31T01:13:00.000-04:00

Ex-offender, families ask justice, compassion to avoid death in prison

by Diane Bukowski
The Michigan Citizen
May 30, 2009

DETROIT — Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy testified, at length, opposing four Michigan House bills that would ban juvenile life without parole sentences, during the second half of hearings called by the House Judiciary Committee May 26.

Numerous prisoners’ families, and Raphael Johnson, an ex-juvenile offender, countered her testimony and that of the Oakland and Berrien County prosecutors.

The bills, as currently amended by House Judiciary Chair and sponsor State Rep. Mark Meadows (D-Lansing), would make those who were under the age of 18 when they committed a crime eligible for parole after 15 years. Previous bills have used the age of 17, which is used by the UN Convention on the Rights on the Child in barring the practice. Meadows said Michigan law automatically considers a 17-year-old an adult.

Worthy brought with her a survivor of a store robbery/murder and the son of the murdered owner, who testified that he firmly supports the death penalty. She said the family of one of the accused threatened the survivor at her college dorm.

“It’s disingenuous to say that these bills will not release prisoners,” Worthy said. “They will be released by the parole board. There is a new push to release more prisoners June 1, and what I’ve seen in the last 18 months is that the parole board has released prisoners without thought or reflection, and the prisoners have re-offended.”

Worthy gave no statistics to back up her allegations.

She also claimed that the bills would make it more difficult for prosecutors to get juveniles to take a second-degree murder plea, as opposed to fighting a first-degree murder charge at trial.

“There were 75 to 100 murders attributed to Young Boys Inc. in the 1980s,” she alleged. “They recruited juveniles to commit murders for them because they would be treated differently than adults. That will happen again. I see it in current gang activity.”

Worthy is to meet with the Judiciary Committee members to negotiate language in the bills which she claimed she could support.

Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper made similar allegations, claiming that the majority-Black city of Pontiac is a blight on “beautiful suburban Oakland County” due to gang activity.

Advocates of the bills said during both hearings that vulnerable juveniles with no other guidance are often recruited by adults to participate in crimes, but that they do not have an adult’s capacity to control their impulses. Experts testified that scientific studies show that their behavior is governed predominantly by the brain’s limbic system and the fight or flight reaction.

Raphael B. Johnson, a candidate for Detroit’s City Council, told a tale of redemption and rehabilitation that has led him to become a national spokesperson and intervenor for at-risk youth.

“As a teen-ager, I committed a horrible and senseless murder,” he said. “I grew up in a neighborhood known for violence and drug-dealing. My father went to prison when I was 22-months-old. I looked to the streets and tough men for role models, Despite the fact that I had a scholarship to U of D High School and was captain of the football team, I got involved in a fight after a party and shot someone not even involved in the fight.”

Robinson was sentenced to 10-to-25 years for second-degree murder and spent six of those years in solitary confinement. He was paroled after 12 years, and has been home for five. He said that sentence enabled him to “see the light at the end of the tunnel” and transform himself.

“I was still demonstrating assaultive behavior in the beginning,” he said. “But I began to change at the age of 25. I came into adulthood. I wrote letters expressing my remorse to the family of the victim and came to an understanding of my despicable crime. I read 1,300 books and wrote three. I learned self-discipline and had a strong desire to make up for the harm I had done.”

Since his release, Johnson has obtained a master’s degree from University of Detroit-Mercy. He mentors youth in the community.

But his happiest moment came, he said, when the family of his victim told him that the victim would have forgiven him, knowing all that he has done to make up for his crime.

He is a strong proponent of re-entry support for ex-offenders coming home, and testified in Washington, D.C., to support a national bill similar to the Michigan bills, called the Juvenile Justice Accountability Act, H.R. 4300.

Michael Sepic of the Berrien County Prosecutor’s office read a letter from James Tetzlaff, the brother of the store manager who was killed in a robbery where Efren Paredes, Jr. worked. Paredes was convicted of murder when he was 16. Sepic said Paredes showed no remorse at the trial, and claimed an assistant Attorney General called him a “psychopath.”

Tetzlaff also referred to the death penalty, saying, “It should be a life for a life. In Texas, that would take on a different meaning.”

However, Velia Koppenhoefer, Paredes’ mother, told a different story.

“In Berrien County, all those sentenced to life without parole when they were juveniles are children of color,” said Koppenhoefer. “My son has maintained his innocence for 20 years. After work that day, he was driven home by the manager and was with us. Two of his co-defendants were older white youth who are now free. Berrien County has a long and shameful history of racism; it affects every level of the justice system.”

A friend of Edward Sanders, who was 17 when he was sentenced to life without parole in 1976, decried the changes in the juvenile bills excluding seventeen-year-olds.

“Mr. Sanders is a prime example of a Michigan prisoner who has utilized his time behind bars in a productive fashion, obtaining a bachelor’s degree and paralegal certification, and ministering to the legal and spiritual needs of other prisoners,” she said. “He will be devastated to learn that 17-year-olds have been excluded.”

An ACLU representative said that about 150 of Michigan’s 350 juvenile lifers will be eliminated because of this amendment.

Numerous other family members, both of victims and of juvenile lifers, as well as experts from the Michigan State Bar and the ACLU, who favored the bills, spoke.

SCFY has a website at www.secondchanceforyouth.com. It can be reached by phone at 248-738-2111, and by mail at Box 251941, West Bloomfield, MI 48325-1941. An online petition is available at petition@secondchanceforyouth.com.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/l76n9a.

MI House Judiciary Committee Convenes Hearing to Consider Bills to End JLWOP

2009-05-29T00:16:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, May 26, 2009, the Michigan House Judiciary Committee convened a nearly five hour hearing to consider House Bills 4518 and 4594-4596. The bills, if passed, would abolish life without parole (LWOP) sentences for juveniles in the State of Michigan.

The bills would not release a single prisoner. They would merely give parole review consideration to prisoners after serving 15 years who committed their crimes, or were accused of committing their crimes, before age 17.

Click here to view a blog post about the hearing. The author is also inviting people to blog about the issue of juvenile LWOP sentences in his post. You can also click here to view or download the minutes of the House Judiciary Committee hearing.

Revisions were made to House Bills 4518, 4594, and 4596 during the first House Judiciary Committee hearing that convened. You can also click here to view several other related studies and documents on our Scribd document-sharing page.

Residents of the State of Michigan are strongly urged to support passage of these bills. You can join the 95% of Michigan residents who oppose LWOP sentences for juveniles, according to a Wayne State University School of Social Work study, by contacting your State Representatives to pass the bills via phone, fax, e-mail and U.S. Mail.

It is long overdue that the USA join the rest of the civilized world and end LWOP for juveniles. We can no longer be the only country in the world that imposes these deplorable sentences on children.

God Cries When We Sentence Youth to Die in Prison

2009-05-21T08:21:00.001-04:00

Faith Communities for Families and Children presents, "God Cries When We Sentence Children to Die in Prison." Five religious leaders from diverse faith traditions, united with the shared conviction that God does not want any of our children to perish as casualties of our justice system. Sentencing youth to die in prison is not a solution, it is a sign of society's failure. Please view this powerful video and invite others to view it as well.

Too Young to Discard

2009-05-12T02:14:00.000-04:00

The Toledo Blade
Editorial
May 11, 2009

THE fundamental principle the Supreme Court applied to a 2005 ruling that declared the death penalty unconstitutional for juveniles should apply to life imprisonment sentences meted out to juveniles convicted of nonlethal crimes.

When the high court takes up two Florida cases later this year, it should decide against life sentences without chance of parole for criminal teens.

There is a good reason juveniles and adults are usually handled separately in the judicial system.

Children who commit crimes should be punished in some fashion, but they are held to lesser standards than adult lawbreakers because their poor judgment and misbehavior reflect their age and their still-developing maturity.

Much as it seems that juveniles are committing ever more serious crimes, most are simply too young to be permanently discarded by society via life sentences without possibility of parole.

In the two cases the court will hear, one defendant was 13 at the time he allegedly raped a 72-year-old Pensacola woman, and the other was 17 when he was charged with participating in a series of robberies.

Both had been involved in earlier crimes and both got life in prison without parole when convicted and sentenced as adults. But those sentences, their lawyers argue, are precisely the kind of extreme measures that, for adolescents, fall under the Eighth Amendment's injunction against cruel and unusual punishment.

The Supreme Court used that yardstick when outlawing capital punishment for juvenile offenders. Now it should do the same for life without parole for individuals who are, despite the seriousness of their crimes, still children.

Source: http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009905110311

Letter Urging Louisiana State Legislature to Support Bill Affecting Juvenile Life Without Parole

2009-05-12T01:12:00.000-04:00

May 12, 2009

Members of the Louisiana State Legislature
Louisiana State Capitol
900 North 3rd Street
Baton Rouge, LA 70802

Re: Human Rights Watch supports House Bill 715

Dear Members of the Louisiana State Legislature:

Human Rights Watch urges you to vote in favor of House Bill 715, which would provide persons who were 15 or 16 years old at the time of their crime an opportunity to apply for a parole hearing upon reaching their 31st birthday. The bill would affect, among others, children who have been sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. Human Rights Watch opposes life without parole for juveniles because it is cruel, inappropriately harsh, and a violation of US treaty obligations. [1]

Human Rights Watch has been analyzing life without parole sentences for children since 2004. Our research has culminated in four publications: The Rest of Their Lives: Life Without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States (a 2005 report on juveniles sentenced to life without parole throughout the United States); Thrown Away (a 2005 report on life without parole for juveniles in Colorado); When I Die They'll Send Me Home (a 2008 report on life without parole for juveniles in California); and The Rest of Their Lives: Life Without Parole for Youth Offenders in the United States in 2008 (updated executive summary). Based on our research, we urge you to support House Bill 715 for three main reasons.

First, in Roper v. Simmons, the United States Supreme Court recognized that the significant differences between juveniles and adults "render suspect any conclusion that a juvenile falls among the worst offenders." [2] Given their lack of maturity, susceptibility to peer pressure, and incomplete character development, the Court said, even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is not "evidence of irretrievably depraved character." [3]

The sentence of life without parole was created for the worst criminal offenders, who are deemed to have no possibility of reform. While the crimes they commit can cause undeniable suffering, juvenile offenders are not the "worst of the worst."

Moreover, Human Rights Watch estimates that 59% of the youth serving life without parole in the United States received this sentence for their very first offense-they had no juvenile or adult criminal record whatsoever prior to the offense that resulted in their life sentence. We also estimate that 26% of the youth serving life without parole in the United States received it for aiding and abetting or for felony murder-that is, they did not personally cause the death of the victim.

Second, the United States is the only country in the world that sentences youthful offenders to life without parole. There are currently more than 2,500 persons in the United States serving life without parole for crimes they committed before age 18; to our knowledge, not a single youth is serving this sentence anywhere else in the world. Louisiana currently has 335 youth serving this harsh sentence; only Pennsylvania and Michigan-both much larger states-have more.

International human rights law prohibits life without parole sentences for those who commit their crimes before the age of 18, a prohibition that is universally applied outside of the United States. Indeed, this practice violates US treaty obligations. The Human Rights Committee (the oversight and enforcement body for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by the United States in 1992) has said that "[t]he Committee is of the view that sentencing children to life sentences without parole is of itself not in compliance with article 24(1) of the Covenant." Moreover, the Committee Against Torture (the oversight and enforcement body for the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, ratified by the United States in 1994) has stated that life without parole sentences for youth "could constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" in violation of the treaty.

Third, we are deeply concerned that racial discrimination enters into the determination of which youth serve life without possibility of parole sentences, and which youth enjoy the possibility of release. In Louisiana, at least 79% of juveniles serving life without parole are black, although African Americans constitute only 30% of Louisiana's population. Last year the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (the oversight and enforcement body for the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, a treaty ratified by the United States in 1994) concluded that, in light of the racial disparities in the sentencing of youth to life without parole, "the persistence of such sentencing is incompatible with article 5(a) of the Convention. The Committee therefore recommends that the [United States] discontinue the use of life sentence without parole against [youth offenders], and review the situation of persons already serving such sentences."

Children can and do commit terrible crimes. When they do, they should be held accountable and face appropriate consequences. But children are different from adults, and the punishment imposed for their offenses should reflect their age and level of development. At a minimum, laws should preserve the opportunity for parole for juvenile offenders, and the ability to review whether someone sentenced to life in prison as a child has been rehabilitated.

For the foregoing reasons, Human Rights Watch urges Louisiana to eliminate the sentence of life without parole for children by enacting House Bill 715.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can provide any further information.

Very truly yours,

David C. Fathi
Director, US Program

_________________

[1] In this letter the terms "juveniles," "youth," and "children" refer to persons under age 18.

[2] 543 U.S. 551, 570 (2005).

[3] Ibid.

Source: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/05/11/letter-urging-louisiana-state-legislature-support-bill-affecting-juvenile-life-witho

Click here to view a PDF version of this letter.

U.N. Expert Calls on U.S. to Address Ongoing Issues of Racism

2009-05-09T00:06:00.000-04:00

May 8, 2009

NEW YORK (Map) - Special Rapporteur Calls For Law Against Racial Profiling And End To Juvenile Life Without Parole

NEW YORK, May 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In a report made public today, the United Nations independent expert on racism urged the U.S. to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system and end the practice of sentencing juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He also called on Congress to pass the End Racial Profiling Act (ERPA) and create a bipartisan commission to evaluate the on-going fight against racism and the occurrence of re-segregation, especially in housing and education.

Special Rapporteur Doudou Diene made his recommendations after an official visit in June 2008 during which he met with officials from the Departments of Justice, State, Labor and Energy, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, representatives of state and local government, affected community members and non-government organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union.

The following can be attributed to Jamil Dakwar, Director of the ACLU Human Rights Program:

"This report is a stark reminder of U.S. achievements and failures to fight racism and protect equality for all. For the U.S. to lead by example, it should heed the recommendations of this international expert and do more to address ongoing issues of racism in this country. The government should intensify the enforcement of laws that protect civil and human rights. A good first step would be to work with Congress and local governments to reform and strengthen existing oversight and enforcement mechanisms and provide more resources to enhance investigative powers to review complaints of human rights violations in general and racial and ethnic bias in particular. This administration has pledged to renew the U.S. commitment to human rights at home and abroad. Now we must walk the walk and turn words into action by addressing the ongoing discrimination and injustice that exists here at home."

The following can be attributed to Chandra Bhatnagar, a staff attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Program:

"Our government invited the U.N. Special Rapporteur to conduct a thorough analysis of racial discrimination in the United States, and now our government should take notice of the widespread and systemic problems that he documented. The report highlights very serious issues including racism in the criminal justice system, and the disparity between sentencing for crack and powder cocaine, serious abuses facing immigrant and African-American workers in the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the overall vulnerability of immigrant workers around the country, and the need to meaningfully address the 'school-to-prison pipeline.' The Obama administration has an opportunity to address all of these important issues and this report offers us a path forward toward justice, equality and human rights for all."

The special rapporteur will present his findings at the next session of the U.N. Human Rights Council next month. On April 27, the U.S. submitted a list of human rights pledges and commandments as part of its bid to join the Council.

The report is available online at: www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/11session/A.HRC.11.36.Add.3.pdf

More information about the ACLU's work with the special rapporteur is available online at: www.aclu.org/racialjustice/gen/sr_racism.html

Source: http://tinyurl.com/oj49ua

US: End Life Sentences for Youth Offenders

2009-05-07T23:58:00.000-04:00

New Figures Show More Youth Sentenced to Die in Prison

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 7, 2009

4:05 PM

CONTACT: Human Rights Watch (HRW)
Tel: +1-212-216-1832
Email: hrwpress@hrw.org

(Washington, DC) - The US Congress should pass a proposed law to end the sentencing of youth offenders to life in prison without the possibility of parole, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to members of the House Judiciary Committee. At least 2,574 individuals in the United States are serving these sentences for crimes they committed before they were 18 years old. The United States is the only country that uses such sentences for crimes committed by juveniles.

On May 6, 2009, Representatives Robert "Bobby" Scott and John Conyers introduced H.R. 2289, the Juvenile Justice Accountability and Improvement Act of 2009, in the US House of Representatives. The bill would require states and the federal government to offer youth offenders meaningful opportunities for parole after serving 15 years of a life sentence.

"Sentencing juveniles to die in prison is cruel, costly, and unnecessary," said David Fathi, US Program director at Human Rights Watch. "Even youths who commit terrible crimes can grow and be rehabilitated." [Click here to view Fathi's letter to the U.S. House of Representatives Judicary Committee.]

The introduction of the bill coincided with Human Rights Watch's release of new figures showing that there are currently at least 2,574 persons in US prisons who were sentenced to life without parole for crimes committed before the age of 18, an increase of 90 from May 2008.

The higher number is due primarily to improvements in data reporting rather than significant increases in the number of youth sentenced to life without parole. Increases were most dramatic in California (250 total, an increase of 23), Michigan (346 total, an increase of 30), and the federal Bureau of Prisons (37 total, an increase of 35). Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Texas also saw increases in juvenile life without parole. The states with the largest numbers of prisoners serving this sentence are Pennsylvania (444), Michigan (346), Louisiana (335), Florida (266), and California (250).

Research by Human Rights Watch found that nationwide, 59 percent of youth serving life without parole sentences received the sentence for their first criminal conviction, and 16 percent were 15 or younger at the time of their offense. An estimated 26 percent were convicted on the basis of accomplice liability or felony murder. These are crimes in which a teenager who commits a non-homicide felony such as a robbery is held responsible for a codefendant's act of murder during the course of the crime. State laws often do not require the person convicted on this charge to know that a murder was planned or even that the codefendant was armed.

"Subjecting juvenile offenders to the harshest sentence possible fails to recognize that they are simply different from adults," Fathi said. "The evidence we have is that they are less culpable for their actions, and more amenable to rehabilitation."

Recent studies of adolescent brain development have found that teens do not have the abilities of adults to make sound decisions, control their impulses, resist group pressures, or weigh the long-term consequences of their actions.

Human Rights Watch has also found substantial racial disparities in life without parole sentences given to juveniles. On average across the country, black youth are serving life without parole at a per capita rate that is 10 times that of white youth. In Pennsylvania, which has the largest number of juvenile offenders serving life without parole, black youth are 21 times as likely to be serving the sentence as white youth.

Last year, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination urged the United States to discontinue the use of the sentence, finding that the persistent racial disparities in sentencing were incompatible with US treaty obligations. US sentencing of youth to life without parole is also a violation of, or raises concerns under, other international treaties to which the United States is party, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

The Juvenile Justice Accountability and Improvement Act of 2009 would require states to provide juvenile offenders serving life sentences with meaningful opportunities for parole at least once during their first 15 years of incarceration, and at least every three years thereafter. States that do not comply would lose a portion of their federal funding for law enforcement. The bill would also require parole hearings for juveniles given life sentences under federal law.

"Giving these juvenile offenders an opportunity for a parole hearing is not a guarantee of release," said Fathi. "But it offers them incentives for rehabilitation and brings the United States into line with internationally recognized standards of justice."

On May 4, the US Supreme Court agreed to decide whether life without parole for juveniles who have committed only non-homicide crimes violates the US Constitution's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments. The case will be heard in the court's next term, which begins in October.

Source: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/05/07/us-end-life-sentences-youth-offenders

Putting the Kids Away

2009-05-07T22:27:00.000-04:00

Putting the Kids Away

by Michelle Chen
RaceWire
The ColorLines Blog
May 7, 2009

Compared to children in other countries with similar resources, America’s youth tend to be a mediocre bunch in rankings of education, infant survival and overall well-being.

But the United States has earned one major distinction in how it treats youngest citizens. Nationwide, more than 2,500 individuals are set to die in prison for crimes they committed as children. In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Human Rights Watch stated today, “there is not a single individual serving this sentence in the rest of the world.”

So, America clearly leads the world in producing monstrous killer youth. Though, it’s hard to square that this finding from HRW’s research:

“approximately 26 percent of the youth sentenced to life without parole had not actually committed a murder and were convicted for their role in aiding and abetting or participating in a felony. In these cases, someone else was the primary actor in committing the crime.”

In contrast to the hyped image of the rabid “juvenile super-predator,” the majority were first-time offenders. But they did have some things in common with their adult counterparts in the system: they were disproportionately Black and almost all male.

Though comprehensive data was not available for all states, HRW found that the most severe racial disparities in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and California, “where black youth are between 18 and 48 times more likely to be serving a sentence of life without parole than white youth.” Evidently, we may not have more dangerous kids—just more kids caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, and very likely, with the wrong skin color.

Activists point out that aside from the sheer barbarity of condemning a child to life behind bars—and science that argues in favor of greater leniency toward child offenders—our criminal justice system is uniquely ill-equipped to administer this punishment. You might say it's no wonder we have so many children in prison for life, in light of epidemic racial disparities at every phase of the criminal process, incompetency plaguing law enforcement procedures, and a lack of due process for child defendants.

International law, HRW argues, prohibits life sentences without parole for youth under the age of 18. International human rights bodies have found the United States to be in violation of both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination—another area where U.S. exceptionalism reigns.

Before all those young lives run out in our nation's prisons, lawmakers can step in to give some of them a chance to rehabilitate and rejoin their communities by passing the Juvenile Justice Accountability and Improvement Act. The bill would bar life-without-parole sentences juvenile crimes in the federal system, and broaden parole opportunities to youth offenders in state prisons who have already served a number of years.

The legislation wouldn't fix the myriad flaws of state and federal corrections policy, but it would demonstrate to the rest of the world that, having stolen the youth of so many child “offenders,” the American criminal justice system is finally ready to grow up.

Source: http://www.racewire.org/archives/2009/05/putting_the_kids_away.html

Another Cruel and Unusual Punishment for Teens

2009-05-07T00:44:00.000-04:00

Another Cruel and Unusual Punishment for Teens
by Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Commentary
New America Media
May 6, 2009

Four years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court took a big step toward righting a galling wrong. It joined nearly every other nation on the globe and banned teen executions. Now it should take the next big step and dump all laws that let states lock up juvenile offenders for the rest of their life.

There are lots of them. In a report last year, Human Rights Watch found that more than 2,000 juvenile offenders are serving life without possibility of parole sentences. The U.S. locks up more juveniles for life without the possibility of parole than all nations combined.

The Court will rule on two Florida cases, where juvenile offenders got no-parole life sentences. The two cases point to the often-appalling legal and racial inequities in the juvenile no-parole sentencing. The two men committed crimes when they were 17 years old. The crimes were violent crimes; a rape and an armed home invasion robbery. But in both cases, the evidence, testimony and witness identification were muddled and contradictory. They were still convicted and have spent more than a decade in prison.

As is the case with the death penalty, the no-parole sentences are far from race neutral. In the Florida case, both men are African American. Black teens are 10 times more likely to receive a no-parole life sentence than white youths. They are even more likely to get those sentences when their victims are white. This was the case in the Florida convictions, and they are often tried by all-white or mostly-white juries. Those same juries seldom consider their age as a mitigating factor.

A significant number of juveniles sentenced to no-parole sentences did not actually commit murder but were participants in a robbery or were at the scene of the crime when the death occurred. The majority of the teens slapped with the draconian sentence had no prior convictions, and a substantial number were age 15 or under.

Judges and juries say that violence is violence no matter the age of the perpetrator, and that punishment must be severe to deter crime. Prosecutors and courts in the 40 states that convict and impose no-parole life sentences on juvenile offenders -- with California, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Michigan, and Florida leading the pack -- have repeatedly rejected challenges that teen no-parole sentences are a violation of the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Though murder rates have plunged to near record lows, the public remains anxious of violent crimes, especially young persons who commit them. Lawmakers are loath to do anything that will bring public heat on them that they are soft on crime. This is still considered the kiss of death for political careers.

Yet most experts agree that children don't have the same maturity, judgment, or emotional development as adults. In a report on juveniles and the death penalty, Amnesty International found that a number of child offenders sentenced to death suffered severe physical or sexual abuse. Many others were alcohol or drug impaired, or suffered from acute mental illness or brain damage. Nearly all were below average intelligence.

Despite Hollywood sensationalism and media-driven myths about rampaging youth, most experts insist that children are not natural-born predators. If given proper treatment, counseling, skills training and education, most can be turned into productive adults.

An irony in the Supreme Court's 2005 ban on executing teen killers was that the ban actually worked against no-parole reform efforts. Since states could no longer execute juvenile offenders, then the legal thinking was that it was far more humane to sentence them to life sentences. Victims' rights advocacy groups claim that taking away the option of no- parole sentences for juveniles will weaken crime deterrents. This makes it even tougher to make the case that counseling, treatment, and education is the more effective way to redeem young people who commit crimes than harsh sentencing -- but it is.

And there’s the gnawing question of race. The racial gap between black and white juvenile offenders is vast and troubling. The rush to toss the key on black juveniles has had terrible consequences in black communities. It has increased poverty, fractured families, and further criminalized a generation of young black men.

No matter what their age, those who commit crimes -- especially murder -- must be punished, but the punishment should not only fit the crime, it should also fit the age of the person who committed it, and the circumstances that drove them to commit their offenses. If juvenile offenders with the right help can turn their life around, they deserve that chance, and judges should be able to give it to them.

The Supreme Court in its decision to ban juvenile executions called teen executions "shameful." They recognized that the practice cannot, and should not, be justified on moral or legal grounds, and that it was past time to put a stop to them. The court should recognize the same with the no-parole sentence for teens and outlaw it.

Source: http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=599f7802903e64f19e26a96107c3a214

U.S Supreme Court Justices to Hear Appeals of Lifers Sentenced as Teens

2009-05-04T13:18:00.000-04:00

By Bill Mears
CNN Supreme Court Producer
Monday, May 4, 2009

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court will decide whether it is cruel and unusual punishment for young criminal offenders to be sentenced to life in prison with parole.

The justices agreed without comment Monday to accept appeals from two Florida inmates convicted as teenagers of criminal offenses. Oral arguments will be heard in the fall.

One of the men is Joe Sullivan, 33, serving a life term without the possibility of parole in a Florida prison while confined to a wheelchair. He was sentenced for a rape committed when he was 13.

The man's lawyers say he is one of only two people his age in the world who was tried as an adult and sentenced to "die in prison" for a non-homicide.

The justices also accepted a case dealing with Terrance Graham, who was 17 when he took part in a violent home-invasion robbery while on parole for another felony.

Outside a death-penalty context, the high court has offered little recent guidance on how to treat the youngest of underage criminal defendants. The appellate record for rapists younger than 15 is almost nonexistent, legal experts say.

Child legal advocates say many states lack adequate resources to handle young inmates given long sentences, including a lack of proper jailhouse counseling. Few studies have been conducted on the psychological effects of young defendants facing life in prison at such a young age, said the Equal Justice Institute, which is representing Sullivan's high court case.

"We have created a forgotten population with a lot of needs," said Bryan Stevenson, Sullivan's lawyer.

The crime happened in 1989, when, Sullivan admitted, he and two friends ransacked a home on Seabrook Street in West Pensacola. But he denied the prosecutor's claim that he returned with a knife and sexually assaulted the 72-year-old female homeowner. An older co-defendant claimed that Sullivan was the rapist.

After a daylong trial, Escambia County Circuit Judge Nicholas Geeker sentenced Sullivan to life without parole.

"I am going to try to send him away for as long as I can. He is beyond help," the judge said. "The juvenile system has been utterly incapable of doing anything with Mr. Sullivan."

Sullivan, who had a lengthy juvenile record, continues to deny that he committed the attack.

At the time, state prosecutor Larry Kaden -- who retired this year -- said, "It was a brutal crime, and he had an extensive record. This was a bad, bad crime."

The Florida attorney general's office told the high court that prosecutors should have the discretion they have long been given to decide how harshly young criminals should be prosecuted. Sexual battery remains a crime punishable by life imprisonment in Florida.

A study by the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative found eight prisoners serving life terms for crimes committed at age 13, all in the United States. Among them is another Florida inmate, Ian Manuel, who was 13 when convicted of attempted murder and robbery in 1990.

The Justice Department reports that no 13-year-old has been given life without parole for a non-homicide in a decade. And although about a thousand people under 15 are arrested for rape every year, none has been given life without parole since Sullivan.

Only a handful of states -- including Alaska, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Oregon -- prohibit sentencing minors to life without a chance for parole, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The Equal Justice Initiative says 19 states have laws allowing the possibility of life without parole for those younger than 14.

In 2005, the Supreme Court banned the death penalty for underage killers. The justices cited evolving "national standards" as a reason to ban such executions.

Sullivan is in deteriorating health from multiple sclerosis and is confined to "close management" for dangerous or trouble-prone inmates, state corrections officials say.

His lawyers admit that he has had more than a 100 incidents of fighting and threatening inmates and guards, plus having contraband and weapons, but they say Sullivan is the victim of bullying by other prisoners and is mentally disabled.

"It's important for the criminal justice system to recognize that inmates like Joe [Sullivan] are going to change biologically, psychologically and emotionally as they grow up in prison," Stevenson said. "We should not assume it is a change for the worse."

The thrust of their argument before the high court is not that Sullivan is innocent or that he seeks his freedom now but that he deserves to someday make his case before the state parole board.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/04/teen.lifers.supreme.court/

Change the Juvenile Lifer Law

2009-05-04T00:18:00.000-04:00

Offer at least the hope of a second chance for young offenders

by Jeff Gerritt
The Detroit Free Press
Sunday, May 3, 2009

Michigan's notorious juvenile lifer law has drawn fire from human rights groups nationwide, and rightly so. The law has forced judges to give kids as young as 14 -- an age when they cannot legally drive or buy a pack of cigarettes -- the maximum adult penalty, with no chance of parole.

This law must change, and a package of bills sponsored by state Sen. Liz Brater, D-Ann Arbor, and others in the state Senate and House offers the best hope yet of doing that. A public hearing is set before the House Judiciary Committee on May 6.

These bills are not soft on crime. They would not, by themselves, release a single juvenile lifer. They would only give them a chance at parole after they have served 10 years, and some have already served decades.

The United States, with more than 2,000 juvenile lifers, is alone in handing down mandatory life sentences to children, according to Human Rights Watch. Nearly 350 Michigan inmates are serving such sentences for first-degree murder -- the third-highest number among states. Many were convicted for aiding and abetting the crime, and some received harsher sentences than the actual killers got. For a third, the crime was their first offense. Two-thirds of Michigan's juvenile lifers are African American.

Expensive injustice

Michigan's juvenile lifer laws were enacted during the 1980s, when many draconian measures, including three-strike laws, were approved around the country. For years, bills to repeal the laws stalled in committee. But last year, the Democratic-controlled House approved them with some bipartisan support, giving backers real hope for this legislative session.

Fueling such hopes is a general rethinking of Michigan's criminal justice and corrections policies. Michigan faces a $1.6-billion deficit next year, so politicians, including Gov. Jennifer Granholm, have moved to right-size Michigan prisons. Costing $2 billion a year, the Michigan Department of Corrections eats up 20% of the state's general fund -- more than the state spends on higher education.

But saving money is not the only issue; there are moral, legal and constitutional problems with Michigan's juvenile lifer law. It contradicts science, legal tradition, public opinion and plain common sense.

Brain-imaging research shows -- big surprise -- that teenagers are more impulsive and unstable than adults, even without the abuse and neglect that many young offenders have faced. "Sentencing a child to life without parole is cruel and unusual punishment and should be considered unconstitutional," Brater told me, after leading the fight against Michigan's juvenile lifer law for the last six years. "Given the Supreme Court's ruling on the death penalty for minors, the logical legal inference is that the principle should apply to life without parole as well."

The case of Henry Hill Jr.

Henry Hill Jr., MDOC No. 169371, grew up in Saginaw and was too young to buy a beer when he was arrested for murder. Like many juvenile lifers, Hill took part in the crime but did not do the killing. Under Michigan law, aiding and abetting a first-degree murder carries the same penalty, and prosecutors argued that Hill planned the killing with his cousin, Larnell Johnson, who was then 18.

Johnson shot Anthony Thomas repeatedly during a fight at Wickes Park in the summer of 1980 (Johnson is also doing mandatory life). But witnesses, including an off-duty sheriff's deputy, said Hill was running from the scene when Johnson killed Thomas. Before Hill left, he fired six shots with a handgun, up into the air, trying to scare people away. None of Hill's bullets matched those found in the victim's body.

Hill's maturity level was far less than even his age would suggest. In a court-ordered evaluation, a psychologist called the 16-year-old mentally deficient, insecure and unable to tell right from wrong. The report states that Hill, who dropped out in the 11th grade, had the education level of a third-grader and the mental maturity of a 9-year-old. In no way should Hill have been judged by adult standards.

"I was dumb as a box of rocks," Hill, now 45, told me at Thumb Correctional Facility in Lapeer. "I couldn't even read. I was 20 before I really realized the significance of what I had done."

Hill has served nearly 30 years in prison -- two-thirds of his life. The 16-year-old who had been labeled mentally deficient is now bright, articulate and well read. He earned a GED in prison and took college courses. He is writing a book about his life.

A psychological evaluation completed in February by the Department of Corrections called Hill cooperative, polite, articulate and straightforward. It concluded that his thinking was logical, flexible and goal-oriented.

Hill applied for a commutation in September and, after getting interviewed by the Parole Board last month, hopes for freedom.

Although he didn't kill Thomas, Hill knows he played a part and deserved to be punished. "We were all friends at one time. It was a tragedy -- just senseless. He lost his life and we could have lost ours."

Locked out of a second chance

But when is enough, enough? Keeping him locked up serves neither justice nor the taxpayer. At the very least, he and other juvenile lifers deserve a chance at freedom.

I hope Hill gets his commutation, but the governor reserves such actions for special cases only. Hundreds more like Hill will never get the same opportunity. Changing state law to make juvenile lifers eligible for parole is the best way to correct this unjust and unforgiving system.
___________________

Speak Out

A public hearing on second chance bills to repeal Michigan's juvenile lifer law -- HB 4518, 4594, 4595 and 4596 -- will take place on Wednesday, May 6, at 10:30 a.m. before the House Judiciary Committee at 521 House Office Building in Lansing. To voice an opinion, you can also contact your state representative or senator or Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

Contact information for state representatives can be found at house.michigan.gov. For state senators, go to senate.michigan.gov. Granholm can be contacted at http://www.michigan.gov/gov, or by calling 517-373-3400, or writing her at P.O. Box 30013, Lansing, MI 48909.

Corresponding bills in the state Senate -- SB 173, 174, 175 and 176 -- are before the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by state Sen. Wayne Kuipers, R-Holland. Kuipers can be contacted at senwkuipers@senate.michigan.gov; by phone at 517-373-6920, or by mail at P.O. Box 30036, Lansing, MI 48909.

To read "Second Chances" profiles of juvenile lifers by the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, go to http://www.aclumich.org/resources/publications#JLWOP

Source: http://www.freep.com/article/20090503/OPINION01/905030440/

California's Juvenile Injustice System

2009-04-30T07:17:00.000-04:00

The state sentences children as young as 14 to life without parole. A state Senate bill would bring some sanity to the situation.

Editorial
The Los Angeles Times
Thursday, April 30, 2009

Children, even really bad ones, are different from adults. That basic truth is the foundation of our juvenile justice system, which seeks to protect society from violent youth while recognizing that they haven't yet developed an adult's brainpower, resistance to peer pressure, judgment and thus moral capacity. It's the underpinning of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2005 ruling in Roper vs. Simmons, which banned execution of inmates for crimes they committed as children.

That doesn't stop California from locking up children as young as 14 for life without even the most remote possibility of parole. There are more than 200 such offenders living out their lives in prison here, with no chance -- despite any maturing, any repentance, any burgeoning awareness of the wrongness of their actions -- of asking for parole, even decades into adulthood. That's costly, cruel and foolish.

Knowing they will live and die in prison, people who acted in the rashness of youth have no hope of returning to society, and therefore no reason to learn, or grow, or mature, or reform. But surely their example will dissuade other youth from crime? Nonsense. Kids who can't imagine next year can't imagine life in prison and can't be expected to make decisions based on something as obscure to them as parole.

Consider, as well, cases such as Antonio Nunez of South Los Angeles, who at 14 was in a car with two adults when someone in the vehicle fired at police. No one was injured, but the boy was sentenced to life in prison forever. It's not an unusual story in this city, where adult gang members recruit teens to help them out and take the fall. Dickens would have a field day.

SB 399, by state Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), would give a few of California's youth imprisoned without parole some very narrow hope of a future. It would permit a judge, at least a decade after the sentencing, to consider substituting a sentence of 25 years to life. The inmate would still have to serve a quarter of a century before even being eligible to ask for parole.

Even this modest, sane and humane reform could fail in Sacramento on the specious assertion that the state would be unable to bear the cost of an occasional additional parole hearing; we will instead continue to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a lifetime of imprisonment because of the actions of a teenager. No wonder California can't manage a prison system or balance a budget.

Of all the nations of the world, only the United States permits life without parole for children. Even here, a growing number of states have banned the practice. California should too, but in the meantime, Yee's bill is a sane start.

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-life30-2009apr30,0,786520.story

Hearing on Bills to End Life Without Parole Sentences for Juveniles in Michigan

2009-04-28T01:12:00.000-04:00

"Youth of color sentenced to die in prison are collateral damage

in the fierce crosswinds of failed public policies." —Efrén Paredes, Jr.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009 the Michigan House Judiciary Committee will be holding a hearing on House Bills 4518 and 4594-4596. The hearing will take place at the Anderson House Office Building at 10:30 AM.

The bills would prohibit judges from sentencing people convicted of crimes they were accused of committing as juveniles to life without parole (LWOP) sentences. It would also make prisoners who are currently serving these sentences eligible for release after 10 years.

Passage of the bills will not release a single prisoner. It will only give the prisoners parole consideration. It is important to understand this fact so that the public is not mislead to believe that the bills will automatically release prisoners. This is the strategy that the media and legislators opposed to the bills have been utilizing to instill fear in the public and dissuade other legislators from passing the bills.

It is very important that there be as many people present at the hearing as possible to express support for the bills. At last year's hearing over 100 people attended to express their support. They were all part of a very successful effort that lead to passage of the bills in the House by a large margin.

Unfortunately last year's bills did not make it to the Senate for a vote. This year several legislators are determined to push the legislation forward. With your help we can help make that a reality.

We look forward to seeing as many of you that can attend at the hearing. Please mark this date in your calendars.

Repeal Juveniles' Life Sentences

2009-04-02T23:24:00.000-04:00

OUR OPINION

April 2, 2009

It took the current budget crisis for Michigan officials to reconsider state law that allows juveniles to be imprisoned for life.

So as Michigan struggles to balance its $1.5 billion deficit, now is the right time to do the right thing.

State Sen. Liz Brater, D-Ann Arbor, has introduced legislation to ban life without parole for juveniles and allow those already serving such sentences to apply for parole. That humane and sensible move could save the state $9 million to $12 million annually.

The United States is the only country in the world that sentences teenagers to life in prison with no chance for parole, according to Human Rights Watch. Michigan ranks second highest in the nation in the number of teens serving life.

Many of those locked up were abused or abandoned and suffer significant and untreated mental illness.

They may be extremely dangerous to themselves and others, but they are not adults. They shouldn't be treated as though they are.

Nor would anyone argue these violent criminals be mixed in with shoplifters and truants.

According to the Michigan Department of Corrections, it costs about $30,000 a year to keep an inmate in prison. Michigan typically houses 300 to 400 juvenile lifers. Even if the money it now takes to hold them isn't enough to fund a separate state program, it should be sufficient to share one regionally. The initiative might take the young prisoners farther from home, but families could be comforted by the positive trade-off in treatment.

Michigan law now allows 14- to 16-year-olds to be sentenced as adults. Unless offenders are sentenced to the adult prison system right away or when they turn 17, they get out as soon as their juvenile sentence is served.

The law ought to provide a third option — one that allows courts to order those who have committed serious and violent crimes to be sentenced as juveniles, and to be held and treated for as long as they pose a threat to public safety.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/dhee9u

Juvenile Lifer Bills in Senate

2009-03-15T20:45:00.000-04:00

by Diane Bukowski
The Michigan Citizen
Sunday, March 15, 2009

DETROIT — Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy charged a 17-year-old with assault with intent to commit murder, felonious assault, assault with a dangerous weapon on school grounds, carrying a concealed weapon and felony firearm after he wounded another 17-year-old in the stomach inside Central High School Feb. 18.

The two were gambling in the halls, a practice that has being going on since at least the 70s, according to one Central High alumni. The 17-year-old faces up to life in prison. Days later, police raided CHS and carried away teens as young as 14 on police buses to face loitering charges, whether or not they were students.

“Until they improve the conditions in our schools, there will be more trouble,” said Steve Conn, a high school teacher for 22 years with the Detroit Public Schools. “Despair runs so deep among our young people, who are treated like their lives don’t matter.”

A 16-year-old Detroiter was ordered to stand trial on first-degree murder charges Feb. 5 in connection with the shooting death of an Oak Park police officer, under unclear circumstances. Numerous suburbanites wrote in to daily news message boards calling for his execution, or at least life without parole, although he has not yet been tried or convicted.

These children, and numerous others in Detroit and communities across Michigan, have 400 counterparts already in the system, children who were sentenced at the age of 17 or below to life in prison without parole, and at least 1,000 others serving lengthy jail terms. The number of juvenile non-parolable lifers is up substantially from slightly over 300 a year ago, indicating that more juveniles are newly entering the system, condemned to death behind bars.

But there is hope on the horizon.

“The Juvenile Life Without Parole bills that were passed last year in the House of Representatives represent the greatest hope I have had in 33 years,” wrote Edward Sanders. “These bills must be voted on in the Senate now, to give the second chance we pray for.”

Sanders, who is currently incarcerated at the Earnest C. Brooks Correctional Facility in Muskegon, was 17 when he was convicted in a drive-by shooting in 1976, although he was not the shooter.

He is awaiting word from the Michigan parole board regarding his request for commutation. Before Michigan prisons ceased providing college courses, he obtained his bachelor’s degree and now helps other prisoners as a “jail-house” lawyer and spiritual advisor.

Sanders was referring to Senate Bills 0171 through 0176, sponsored by State Sens. Liz Brater (D-Ann Arbor), Martha Scott (D-Highland Park) and Michael Switalski (D-Roseville). Co-sponsors include Glenn Anderson, (D-Westland), Michael Prusi (D-Ishpeming), Samuel “Buzz” Thomas (D-Detroit), Hansen Clarke (D-Detroit), and Gilda Jackson (D-Huntington Woods).

House versions were passed Dec. 4 by an overwhelming margin of 83-22. The current Senate bills, however, will have to go back to the House again for approval before they can be forwarded to Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm.

“The idea of sending a person whose brain is not fully developed to prison for life has been determined to be inhumane,” said Brater. “The U.S. is one of only two countries in the world, and Michigan is one of few states in the U.S. with this practice. Many of these youth were sentenced along with an adult defendant who got a lesser sentence and many were victims of abuse or neglect or are people with a mental illness or disability.”

The series of bills therefore addresses alternatives to incarceration for mentally ill individuals and diversion from jail under other circumstances as well as the central life without parole question.

S.B. 0173 says, “An individual who was less than 18 years of age when he or she committed a crime for which he or she was sentenced to serve a minimum term of imprisonment of 10 years or more, or who was sentenced to imprisonment for life, including imprisonment for life without parole eligibility, who has served 10 years of his or her sentence is subject to the jurisdiction of the parole board and may be released on parole.”

The bill specifies several aspects of the prisoner’s individual situation for the parole board to consider.

All six bills, introduced Jan. 29, are now in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by State Sen. Alan Cropsey (R-Dewitt). Cropsey has expressed reluctance to let the bills out of committee.

Brater said that although the Senate is predominantly Republican, efforts are constantly being made to reach out to that side of the aisle. A particular consideration is the huge cost of such incarcerations. Both the Greater Detroit and Michigan Chambers of Commerce have passed resolutions calling for a reduction in Michigan’s prison population, along with numerous other organizations and even major media.

Felicia Tyson, part of a group of family members of juvenile lifers, said that they are continuing to organize and lobby Senators as well as Representatives, in the same fashion that won passage of the House bills last year.

“We are asking people to write, phone and email their legislators, and are planning a mass visit to the House in April,” said Tyson. Over 200 family members and even victims turned out for a lobbying effort last year.

The website for the group can be found at www.secondchanceforyouth.com.

The group’s address is P.O. Box 251941, West Bloomfield, MI 48325-1941 and phone 248-738-2111. An online petition to legislators is available at petition@secondchanceforyouth.com.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/clxgru

Bill Could Free Teen Killers

2009-03-11T11:10:00.000-04:00

by Alison Costello, Capital News Service
The Macomb Daily
Wednesday, March 11, 2009

LANSING — Amy Black was 16 when she helped her adult boyfriend clean up the crime scene after he stabbed a man to death in 1990 in Muskegon County.

When they were both arrested, Black falsely claimed she was the killer because she thought she would be treated with more leniency than her older boyfriend.

Because there were no appropriate juvenile facilities for her, she was sentenced as an adult to life without chance of parole, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan.

Now 34, she has served more than 16 years and is at the Scott Correctional Facility in Plymouth.

Black is not alone. The United States is the only country, besides Somalia, that sentences teenagers to life in prison with no chance for parole.

And Michigan is second behind Pennsylvania with more than 300, according to the ACLU. Louisiana, California and Florida trail behind.

Patricia Caruso, director of the Department of Corrections, said the number reaches 400.

Jeff Fink, the Kalamazoo County prosecutor, said each state has a different age group to determine which suspects are considered juveniles. Michigan's is 14 to 16.

Kevin Boyd of Oakland County is one of them.

At 16, Boyd and his mother were convicted of murdering his father.

Boyd denies the charge but admits to giving the keys to his father's apartment to his mother and her lover, knowing that they had discussed killing him.

According to the ACLU, Boyd had suffered emotional and physical abuse from both parents who had divorced five years before the murder, attempted suicide in middle school and had been diagnosed with severe depression.

Now 31, he has served more than a decade and is at the Thumb Correctional Facility in Lapeer.

So at a time when the state struggles with a $1.5 billion deficit and a prison system eating up 20 percent of the budget, advocates of changing the law say it's time to rethink sending juveniles to prison for life without parole.

Juvenile offenders like Black and Boyd may get a second chance if Sen. Liz Brater, D-Ann Arbor, has her way.

She re-introduced legislation to ban life without parole for juveniles and allow such inmates already serving such sentences to apply for parole.

"Many of the juveniles receiving this sentence were acting with older codefendants who received lesser sentences," she said. "Many were abandoned or neglected or had untreated mental illness."

The bill is cosponsored by Sens. Mickey Switalski, D-Roseville; Martha Scott, D-Highland Park; Irma Clark-Coleman, D-Detroit; Gilda Jacobs, D-Huntington Woods; Tupac Hunter, D-Detroit; Hansen Clarke, D-Detroit; and Buzz Thomas, D-Detroit.

Patricia Caruso, director of the state Department of Corrections, supports the legislation and said juveniles should never come into the adult prison system.

"When you put a 14-year-old in an adult system, you've given up. Adult prisons are not designed for juveniles," she said.

In Michigan, the juvenile justice system is run by the Department of Human Services — out of her jurisdiction.

"I'm not saying they should not be held accountable," she said. "I don't think that until they are adults they should come into the adult prison system."

But Fink, who said his office sends fewer than one Kalamazoo County juvenile to adult prison per year, said it's important to have the option.

That's because unless offenders are sentenced to the adult prison system right away or when they turn 17, they'll get out once their juvenile sentence is served, he said.

"Even if you're telling people, 'I hate women, I want to kill people,' you'll be released," he said. "Unfortunately, there are a few juveniles who are a danger to the public."

According to Corrections officials, it costs about $30,000 per year to keep an inmate in prison.

For Michigan's 300 to 400 juvenile lifers, that works out to about $9 million to $12 million of the department's annual $2 billion budget.

Brater's bill is pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Source: http://www.macombdaily.com/articles/2009/03/11/news/srv0000004871943.txt

Jailing Kids for Cash Ignored

2009-03-03T08:44:00.000-05:00

by Clarence Page
Middletown Journal
Tuesday, March 03, 2009

While many Americans, including me, were caught up in the fury around the New York Post's weird "dead chimpanzee cartoon," remarkably less attention was paid to a far more serious scandal in Pennsylvania coal country: a multimillion-dollar scheme to jail kids for cash.

The tale of two Luzerne County judges shows what can go terribly wrong with for-profit prisons and detention centers.

Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan pleaded guilty to sentencing thousands of children to jail, often without any access to a lawyer, in a kickback scheme that brought them a reported $2.6 million over seven years.

The two received a commission for every day they sent a child to private detention centers run by Pennsylvania Child Care and a sister prison-management company, Western Pennsylvania Child Care.

As many as 2,000 kids are reported to have been incarcerated out of 5,000 who were sentenced while the scheme was in operation. They included Jamie Quinn, a 14-year-old Scranton girl who was sent to juvenile jail for nine months. Her offense? Slapping a friend who, she claims, slapped her first. Hardly a hardened criminal.

The case cracked open after Hillary Transue, 15, was sent away for three months for posting a Web site parody of an assistant principal at her school. As in many other cases, her mother had been persuaded to waive the girl's right to a lawyer. Her hearing before Judge Ciavarella lasted less than two minutes.

After the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center took her case to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the FBI began an investigation. The two judges entering guilty-plea agreements in February for tax evasion and wire fraud. Three separate class-action lawsuits have been filed on behalf of the imprisoned children.

The two Luzerne County judges are only the tip of a scandalous iceberg that has been floating around for juvenile detention systems for years. Critics have long complained that private prisons create perverse incentives to throw nonviolent offenders in jail who might be handled better and more cheaply in community-based alternative programs.

Kids are doubly vulnerable, an Associated Press survey found last year. Lax oversight and soft standards for tracking abuse make it hard to tell exactly how many youngsters have been assaulted or neglected.

An AP survey of state public and privately-contracted juvenile correction agencies found more than 13,000 claims of physical, sexual and emotional abuse by staff members from Jan. 1, 2004 to the end of 2007, although only 1,343 of those claims of abuse — including 143 claims of sexual abuse — were confirmed by various authorities.

A big part of the problem in dealing with troubled youths is that some will make up stories. Some who suffer real abuse are pressured not to report it — and when they do, too often they are not believed.

All of which makes it very important that we pay attention to the people we taxpayers pay to deal with kids who get into serious trouble. For a lot of kids who have substance abuse problems, severe educational needs and mental health traumas, juvenile facilities offer hope of last resort.

At least, that's what they're supposed to do. For the Pennsylvania judges, juvenile correction facilities became a cash cow. Systems that pay contractors at per diem rates, according to how may kids they warehouse, invite further abuse.

That's why I was appalled that the confessions of the two judges were overshadowed completely by other news such as, for example, the New York Post's chimpanzee cartoon. Civil rights activists, among other folks, thought it was a crude mockery of President Obama as an ape. It sparked national protests and an apology from the Post and Rupert Murdoch, head of the newspaper's owner, NewsCorp, who insisted it was only a lampoon of the economic stimulus bill.

But where, I wondered, is the outrage over a system that encouraged two Pennsylvania judges to jail kids for cash? Since the kids were a racial mix in a predominately white area of the state, I wondered: When the issue is more about class than race, do civil rights leaders stop caring about kids?

Or maybe, like all of us, it's easier for them to get excited about race when it helps us to avoid dealing with the far more vexing issue of economic inequality.

Clarence Page writes for the Chicago Tribune. E-mail address: cpage@tribune.com

Juveniles Sentenced to Life Without Parole Cost the State Millions

2009-02-24T10:36:00.000-05:00

by Eartha Jane Melzer
The Michigan Messenger
2/24/09 7:16 AM

Michigan’s prison system holds 346 inmates who are serving life without parole for crimes they committed as children. As the state struggles with a $1.5 billion deficit and a prison system that eats up 20 percent of the budget, a bill to end the controversial practice of sending minors to prison for life may gain momentum in the state Legislature.

The United States is the only nation that allows life without parole for juvenile offenders and, according to a report by Human Rights Watch, Michigan ranks third among states for number of people serving such sentences.

Shelli Weisberg, legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, an advocate for banning mandatory life sentences for children, explained that Michigan’s large number of juvenile lifers is a result of legislation enacted in the 1980s during a period of fear about a wave of juvenile crime.

“People were worried about ‘super predators,’” she said. “States around the country started really cracking down, with laws that were intended to get the worst of the worst — kids so far gone that there is nothing that can help them.”

But the fear was a scare tactic, Weisberg said. “In fact the juvenile crime wave was temporary and has gone down.”

In a third of the cases in which Michigan juveniles are sentenced to life without parole, she said, the crime is their first offense.

But tough-on-crime laws beginning in 1988 mandated life without parole sentences for certain crimes, and allowed children as young as 14 to be tried as adult without a special hearing.

Legislation introduced this month by state Sen. Liz Brater (D-Ann Arbor), which has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, would ban life without parole for juveniles. It would also allow those already serving mandatory life sentences for crimes committed as juveniles to apply for parole after a portion of their sentence is served.

“It is inhumane and it is inappropriate to take children before their brains are fully developed and subject them to same sentence that adults would get,” Brater said. “Many of them were sentenced along with an adult defender who got a lesser sentence and many of these youth were victims of abuse or neglect in their homes or are people with mental illness or disability.”

In addition to the ethical problems, she said, incarcerating young people for their full lives represents a significant expenditure for taxpayers and this money could probably do more to prevent crime if spent earlier in life on services like pre-school.

It costs at least $30,000 per year to keep an inmate in the state prison system, according to the Department of Corrections. With 346 mostly still-young lifers serving time for juvenile crime, the current law that prohibits rehabilitation and release will cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars over the next several decades.

Brater, who has introduced this same legislation in the last two legislative session, said that she feels it has developed some momentum. Last year the House held a hearing on the legislation and then passed it with strong bipartisan support.

Gary Walker is president of the Michigan Prosecutors Association, a group that has historically opposed bills to end mandatory life sentences for juveniles.

The legislation proposed by Brater could represent a “monumental change in terms” for the Michigan criminal justice system, Walker said, because the general age of criminal responsibility is 17 in Michigan and a large number of criminal offences are committed by people between 17 and 18 years old.

In Michigan, as in 13 other states, people who are 17 years old are considered adults by the criminal justice system, Walker said. Prosecutors have the option of charging younger offenders as juveniles, Walker said, and generally charge them as adults only in cases involving “horrific” crimes.

The legislation to end juvenile life without parole would in effect change the age of criminal responsibility to 18, Walker said.

“There is no real magic to the age of responsibility,” he said. Some people as young as 16 are fully aware of the meaning of their actions and decades ago the age of majority was 21.

“If we were to be starting out now, 18 may well be an appropriate choice.”

Walker said that Michigan prosecutors are open to working the legislation’s supporters.

“We are always willing to discuss legislation and we try to shape it in a way that is appropriate to Michigan citizens,” he said. “I want to see the kids in caps and gowns, not in jump suits.”

While Brater’s legislation has been referred to the Judiciary Committee, it remains unclear whether the bill will be considered further.

Source: http://michiganmessenger.com/13585/juveniles-sentenced-to-life-without-parole-cost-the-state-millions

The Cradle to Prison Pipeline: America's New Apartheid

2009-02-09T21:14:00.000-05:00

by Marian Wright Edelman
The Huffington Post
February 9, 2009

Incarceration is becoming the new American apartheid and poor children of color are the fodder. It is time to sound a loud alarm about this threat to American unity and community, act to stop the growing criminalization of children at younger and younger ages, and tackle the unjust treatment of minority youths and adults in the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems with urgency and persistence. The failure to act now will reverse the hard-earned racial and social progress for which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and so many others died and sacrificed. We must all call for investment in all children from birth through their successful transition to adulthood, remembering Frederick Douglass's correct observation that "it is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men."

So many poor babies in rich America enter the world with multiple strikes against them: born without prenatal care, at low birthweight, and to a teen, poor, and poorly educated single mother and absent father. At crucial points in their development after birth until adulthood, more risks pile on, making a successful transition to productive adulthood significantly less likely and involvement in the criminal justice system significantly more likely. As Black children are more than three times as likely as White children to be poor, and are four times as likely to live in extreme poverty, a poor Black boy born in 2001 has a one in three chance of going to prison in his lifetime and is almost six times as likely as a White boy to be incarcerated for a drug offense.

The past continues to strangle the present and the future. Children with an incarcerated parent are more likely to become incarcerated. Black children are nearly nine times and Latino children are three times as likely as White children to have an incarcerated parent. Blacks constitute one-third and Latinos one-fifth of the prisoners in America, and 1 in 3 Black men, 20 to 29 years old, is under correctional supervision or control. Of the 2.3 million in jail or prison, 64 percent are minority. Of the 4.2 million persons on probation, 45 percent are minority; of the 800,000 on parole, 59 percent are minority. Inequitable drug sentencing policies including mandatory minimums have greatly escalated the incarceration of minority adults and youths.

Child poverty and neglect, racial disparities in systems that serve children, and the pipeline to prison are not acts of God. They are America's immoral political and economic choices that can and must be changed with strong political, corporate and community leadership.

No single sector or group can solve these child- and nation-threatening crises alone but all of us can together. Leaders must call us to the table and use their bully pulpits to replace our current paradigm of punishment as a first resort with a paradigm of prevention and early intervention. That will save lives, save families, save taxpayer money, and save our nation's aspiration to be a fair society. Health and mental health care and quality education cost far less than prisons.

If called to account today, America would not pass the test of the prophets, the Gospels, and all great faiths. Christians who profess to believe that God entered human history as a poor vulnerable baby, and that each man, woman and child is created in God's own image, need to act on that faith. The Jewish Midrash says God agreed to give the people of Israel the Torah only after they offered their children as guarantors, deeming neither their prophets nor elders sufficient. It is time to heed the prophets' call for justice for the orphans and the weak.

America's Declaration of Independence says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...." After more than two centuries, it is time to make those truths evident in the lives of poor children of color and to close our intolerable national hypocrisy gap. America's sixth child is waiting for all of us to welcome him or her to the table in our rich land and show the world whether democratic capitalism is an oxymoron or whether it can work. Our national creed demands it. All great faiths demand it. Common sense and self-interest require it. And our moral redemption and credibility in the world we seek to lead compels it.

Ending child poverty is not only an urgent moral necessity, it is economically beneficial. Dr. Robert M. Solow, M.I.T. Nobel Laureate in Economics, wrote in Wasting America's Future that "ending child poverty is, at the very least, highly affordable" and would be a boost to the economy. A healthy Social Security and Medicare system for our increasing elderly population need as many productive workers as possible to support them. We can ill afford to let millions of our children grow up poor, in poor health, uneducated, and as dependent rather than productive citizens.

What then can leaders do to help build the spiritual and political will needed to help our nation pass the test of the God of history and better prepare for America's future? What steps can you take to heed Dr. King's warning not to let our wealth become our destruction but our salvation by helping the poor Lazaruses languishing at our closed gates? How can our nation use its blessings to bless all the children entrusted to our care and rekindle America's dimming dream?

As President Obama and Congress contemplate ways to stimulate our economy, let them begin by investing in a healthy, fair, head, and safe start for every American child and measures to ensure their successful transition to college and productive adulthood.

Learn more about CDF's Cradle to Prison Pipeline® Campaign.

Marian Wright Edelman, whose latest book is The Sea Is So Wide And My Boat Is So Small: Charting a Course for the Next Generation, is president of the Children's Defense Fund. For more information about the Children's Defense Fund, go to www.childrensdefense.org.

ACLU-Cooley Chapter Presents Juvenile Injustice Speaker Series

2009-02-09T00:19:00.000-05:00

The ACLU of Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan, is hosting a juvenile injustice speaker series. The following three events have been scheduled in Lansing.

Supporters of the movement to abolish juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentences are highly encouraged to attend the the March 5, 2009 event. Shelli Weisberg, Legislative Director, ACLU of Michigan, will be speaking at this event about the subject of JLWOP sentences.

As additional information is made available about these events we will include it in this post to share with everyone.

Thursday, February 12th
The School to Prison Pipeline
Room 911 Cooley Center
Thomas M. Cooley Law School
300 S. Capitol Ave.
Lansing MI
12p.m.- 2p.m

Thursday, February 26th
Indigent Defense
Christiancy Room-Temple Building
Thomas M. Cooley Law School
217 S. Capitol Ave.
Lansing MI
12p.m.- 2p.m.

Thursday, March 5th
Juvenile Life Without Parole
Christiancy Room-Temple Building
Thomas M. Cooley Law School
217 S. Capitol Ave.
Lansing MI
12p.m.- 2p.m.

Reforming Juvenile Justice

2009-02-04T23:18:00.000-05:00

If you consider yourself "tough on crime" and support trying teenagers and children as adults, I challenge you to volunteer as a mentor to an inner city kid for six months and we'll see if you have the same opinion. Or work in a youth ministry setting with economically disadvantaged minority kids for a while. You just might change your tune.

PBS ran a story this week called Juvenile Life Without Parole and it's worth a look. The Supreme Court has rejected the death penalty for juvenile offenders, but 44 states still can sentence them to life without parole. In my opinion, that's a tragedy, and I think our entire society will be held accountable if we don't move away from this trend.

One of the cornerstones of some political conservatives' opposition to affirmative action is the principle of "equality of opportunity, but not equality of outcomes." In other words, leveling the playing field is good, but quotas are bad. In principle, I agree with this. But if you've hung out with the urban poor for any length of time, you know that equality of opportunity is a myth. There are several reasons why:

There is a cycle of poverty and hopelessness. There is no such thing as equality of public education in lower income communities... rich school districts get the best teachers and the most money. Urban kids have figured this out and many of them feel like second class citizens. The kids who do want to be honest see drug dealers living the "good life" while they're working for 7 bucks an hour (if they can actually get a job). I've had to talk Christian teenagers out of selling drugs when some of the higher level dealers tried to recruit them.
Materialism is a problem with the poor, too. Cable TV and cell phones are considered essentials today, not luxuries. Wealth is an idol, even among many people who aren't wealthy. But this attitude is instilled in kids from a young age, learned by example and reinforced by popular music and culture. So we're dealing with a mindset, a stronghold if you will, often a spiritual one. Those aren't easily brought down with a conversation or two.
Fatherlessness is an epidemic in urban communities. At one point in youth ministry, I counted four kids out of 50 who had dads in the home, and three of those guys were brothers! I understand that there are single moms out there who are doing the best they can, and I applaud them, but the fact is, children (especially boys) need fathers.

While we all have some sense of right and wrong (Scripture confirms this), that sense can become warped and often hasn't been fully developed among at-risk youth. I've dealt with "good kids" who had never even been challenged on "little transgressions" like littering or sneaking food out of a buffet restaurant. When I've pointed these problems out, I've met resistance, but guess what? Things began to change. Not overnight, but light has a way of overcoming darkness if you keep shining it. If nothing else, horizons expand. I've even had kids who aren't Christian tell me that by hanging out at church, they find they can't steal anymore because their consciences start getting to them.

I can't give you a statistic, but I'll go out on a limb and say that most juvenile crimes are probably committed by disadvantaged teenagers. How can we as a society lock them up, throw away the key and offer no chance for redemption? We say we treat everyone fairly, but when our whole economic system is stacked against poor minority kids, how do we in good conscience punish them like we would punish a 40 year-old?

James 2:13 says that "judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment." This scripture is, not coincidentally, immediately after an admonition not to show favoritism to the rich. In a democratic society, I believe God holds us accountable as a nation for structures that screw the poor and perpetuate poverty. When we sit in the suburbs, protect our own kids and allow them to benefit from better schools while inner city kids remain caught in a cycle of poverty and hopelessness, I think God is going to deal with us. With some of the felony murder laws, kids can simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or be influenced by the wrong adult and end up doing life in prison. That grieves me.

I'm not advocating a system that allows minors to commit crimes without any personal cost. What I am advocating is a system that administers justice with mercy, especially for young people who, for whatever reason, are dealing with obstacles that many of us in middle class America couldn't even imagine. Sure, there's always the person who, through determination, overcomes these obstacles and breaks the cycle. But those are few and far between. And that desire to overcome is often instilled by strong parents. What if there isn't anyone there to instill that attitude?

If you want to learn more about how to make a difference, or to get involved in juvenile justice ministry, check out Straight Ahead, an organization established by Dr. Scott Larson. The more you learn, the more you'll realize that this is a whole lot more complicated than the talking points you hear on cable news shows. Straight Ahead also has information on becoming a mentor to an "at-risk" kid. I urge you to get involved, whether you think you're gifted at this or not. Helping the poor is not a spiritual gift, it's an expectation God has of every Christian.

Source: http://www.wesleyreport.com/2009/02/juvenile-justice.html

Letter to Nebraska Legislature Judiciary Chairman Brad Ashford on Legislative Bill 307

2009-02-03T01:29:00.000-05:00

In support of abolishing the sentence of life without parole for children

February 2, 2009

Chairman Brad Ashford
Judiciary Committee
Nebraska Legislature
Room 1103, State Capitol
Lincoln, NE 68509

Dear Chairman Ashford and Members of the Judiciary Committee:

Human Rights Watch urges Nebraska's Judiciary Committee to vote in favor of Legislative Bill 307, which will abolish the sentence of life without parole for children[1] in your state. We oppose the sentence of life without parole for juveniles because it is cruel, inappropriate (particularly so given recent scientific research), and a violation of international law.

Human Rights Watch has been analyzing the issue of life without parole sentences for children since 2004. In the past four years, our research has culminated in four publications: The Rest of Their Lives: Life Without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States[2] (a 2005 report on juveniles sentenced to life without parole throughout the United States); an updated executive summary[3] to The Rest of Their Lives (which reflects 2008 findings); Thrown Away[4] (a 2005 report on life without parole for juveniles in Colorado); and, When I Die They'll Send Me Home[5] (a 2008 report on life without parole for juveniles in California). Based on our research, we urge the Committee to vote in favor of Legislative Bill 307 for three main reasons.

First, in Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 561 (2005), the US Supreme Court found that the differences between juveniles and adults render suspect any conclusion that a juvenile falls among the worst offenders. Neuroscience reveals the process of cognitive brain development, including the formation of impulse control and decision-making skills, continues into early adulthood-well beyond age 18. The fact that juveniles are still developing their identity and ability to think and plan ahead means that even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is not "evidence of an irretrievably depraved character."[6]

The sentence of life without parole was created for the worst criminal offenders, who are deemed to have no possibility of reform. While the crimes they commit cause undeniable suffering, juvenile offenders are not the "worst of the worst."

Human Rights Watch estimates that 59 percent of the youth serving life without parole in the United States received this sentence for their very first offense-they had no prior criminal convictions whatsoever, arising from either juvenile or adult courts. We also estimate that 26 percent of the youth serving the sentence of life without parole in the United States received it for aiding and abetting or felony murder.

Second, the United States is the world's worst human rights violator in terms of sentencing youthful offenders to life without parole. There are currently 2,502 persons serving the sentence of juvenile life without parole in the United States; as of May 2008, to our knowledge, not a single youth is serving this sentence anywhere else in the rest of the world.

International human rights law prohibits life without parole sentences for those who commit their crimes before the age of 18, a prohibition that is universally applied outside of the United States. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) explicitly addresses the contradiction between the particular rights and needs of children and life without parole sentences.[7] Underpinning several of the treaty's provisions is the fundamental recognition of the child's potential for rehabilitation. Recognizing the unacceptability of sentences that negate the potential of children to make changes for better over time, Article 37(a) of the CRC flatly prohibits sentencing children to life without the possibility of parole.[8]

Third, we are deeply concerned that racial discrimination enters into the determination of which youth serve life without possibility of parole sentences, and which youth enjoy the possibility of release. Nationwide, African-American youth serve life without parole sentences at a rate that is ten times higher than that of Caucasian youth.[9] In Nebraska, racial disparities in sentencing practices raise serious concerns: African-American youth arrested for murder are sentenced to life without parole at a rate that is 1.13 times higher than it is for Caucasian youth arrested for murder.

Children can and do commit terrible crimes. When they do, they should be held accountable and face appropriate consequences. Children are different from adults, however, and the punishment imposed for their offenses should reflect their age and level of development. At a minimum, laws should preserve the opportunity for parole for juvenile offenders, and the ability to review whether someone sentenced to life in prison as a child has been rehabilitated.

For the foregoing reasons, Human Rights Watch urges Nebraska to take the opportunity to make its laws more just and eliminate the sentence of life without parole for children by enacting Legislative Bill 307.

Thank you for your consideration, and please feel free to contact me if I can provide you with any further information.

Sincerely,

Carol Chodroff
Advocacy Director, US Program

CC: Senators Mark Christensen, Colby Coash, Brenda Council, Steve Lathrop, Scott Lautenbaugh, Amanda McGill, and Kent Rogert
_____________________________

[1] The terms "children" and "juveniles" in this letter refer to anyone who was below the age of 18 at the time of the offense.

[2] http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2005/10/11/rest-their-lives-0

[3] http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/05/01/executive-summary-rest-their-li...

[4] http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/12/09/thrown-away

[5] http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/01/13/when-i-die-they-ll-send-me-home

[6] Id. at 570.

[7] Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), adopted November 20, 1989, entered into force September 2, 1990, available at: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm.

[8] Although the United States has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, it is a signatory. As such, it has the obligation to refrain from actions which would defeat the treaty's object and purpose.

[9] The Rest of Their Lives: Life Without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States, p. 39 (2005).

Source: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/02/02/letter-nebraska-legislature-judiciary-chairman-brad-ashford-legislative-bill-307

Click here to view or download the PDF version of this letter.

Juvenile Life Without Parole

2009-01-31T02:09:00.000-05:00

Click here to view a comeplling story about the imposition of life without parole (LWOP) sentences on juvenile offenders in the USA. The story was aired Friday, January 30, 2009 on Religion & Ethics, a show that appears on PBS. The segment is 10 minutes and 45 seconds long. Please share this story with advocates who are working to end LWOP sentences for juveniles across the country.

Iowa Bill to End Life Without Parole

2009-01-27T00:38:00.000-05:00

The bill reduces the sentence for a class "A" felony to 15 years certain followed by possible parole for youth who were under 18 at the time the offense was committed. After serving the mandated sentence, individuals may apply for parole as frequently as every two years.

The parole board must consider the age and maturity level of the offender at the time the offense was committed; the applicant's susceptibility to outside pressures at the time the offense was committed; the potential for rehabilitation; the nature and severity of the offense; prior juvenile and criminal history; the overall behavioral record while incarcerated; and the likelihood to commit other offenses if released.

Click here to view the text of the entire bill on our file-sharing site. Click here to learn more information about the bill from the State of Iowa web site.

"Roper v. Simmons: Unveiling Juvenile Purgatory: Is Life Really Better than Death?" by Elizabeth Cepparulo

2009-01-26T00:27:00.000-05:00

The following text is the conclusion to the above-titled research paper. Click here to view the text of the entire paper.

Roper v. Simmons was an important landmark in modern juvenile justice. While abolishing the juvenile death penalty was momentous, it was merely the tip of the iceberg in providing juveniles the privileges they deserve as persons, as well as the rights they deserve as minors.

While violent juvenile offenders are out of place in the juvenile justice system, they appear inappropriate in the adult system as well. Without establishing a separate system for these offenders, juveniles nonetheless require consideration as such in the adult criminal court.

Instead of treating juveniles like adults, just because there is no severe punishment in the juvenile system, it is fundamental to recognize that they are not adults, and should not be denied their status as such.

Mandatory life without parole (LWOP) turns a blind eye to juvenile individuality at sentencing. As a result, the opportunity to present pressing evidence of the juvenile’s psychological and neurological immaturity is thwarted. However, never have the state courts been in such a position of powerlessness to sentence juveniles brought before them.

To deny an individual specific and personal consideration before mandating that he be incarcerated for fifty, sixty, or seventy years is cruel. To deny this right to a child, but not an adult, is unusual.

More than a constitutional privilege, proportionality between crime and punishment is an individual right. The penalogical goals of our system are extraneous if they are not matched to the individual. Punishments that exclusively serve society’s benefit or exclusively that of the juvenile do not yield a productive nor well-designed system of justice.

Judges considering a punishment should consider the rationale behind it, and the balance of benefits to society as well as the individual. Mandatory LWOP only benefits society, and leaves no hope or purpose for rehabilitating the juvenile.

By allowing a proportionality review, and the possibility of life with parole, juveniles are afforded hope. This alone gives them a reason to live, and to learn. It takes little from society; seventy years is still an extreme sentence and one unlikely to permit release before natural death. It is a small alteration for society, yet a large step forward for our nation’s children.

Too Young for Life: Hinojosa Seeks Sentencing Equity

2009-01-23T20:13:00.000-05:00

One of the Legislature’s leading voices on criminal justice issues has decided that teenage killers too young to face execution should also be exempt from being sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“To me it’s a matter of fairness and consistency,” said state Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen. “If the U.S. Supreme Court said to Texas and all the other states, ‘You cannot give these juvenile offenders the death penalty’ [which the Supreme Court did in 2005], then I believe the state of Texas should not be sending them to prison for life without parole.”

Hinojosa, a long-serving lawmaker who sits on the Senate Criminal Justice Committee (and led the House Corrections Committee during his final years as an eight-term state representative), plans to introduce legislation this session that would cap sentences for youthful offenders convicted of capital murder at life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 40 years behind bars.

Such a sentence would be in line with non–capital punishment death sentences handed down before the 2005 Legislature’s enactment of the life-without-parole law. Hinojosa says he decided to push for the new legislation after reading a recent article in the Observer examining the effects of the law (“The Life Penalty,” Nov. 28, 2008).

That law draws no distinction between offenders who commit capital murder before turning 18 and those who kill as adults.

“I think, for someone so young, there is a chance to rehabilitate their lives,” Hinojosa said.

Four under-18 offenders are now serving life-without-parole sentences in Texas. All were sentenced before the 2007 Legislature required the state’s district courts to report demographic information on capital murder cases to the state Office of Court Administration.

When the Nov. 28 Observer went to press, the Office of Court Administration had no information about the ages of the offenders serving life without parole. That information was made available by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in December, after Hinojosa’s office requested a closer examination of life-without-parole cases.

State Sen. Eddie Lucio, who advocated the life-without-parole law for six years before it was finally enacted, says he’s open to Hinojosa’s proposed exclusion of youthful offenders, but he wants to see the fine print before committing.

“While I have not seen the language in the proposed bill, I would certainly support an effort to allow juveniles convicted of capital offenses to receive sentences whereby they might be considered for parole after 40 years,” Lucio said. “This was an additional option to life without parole that I also supported for adult offenders. I have faith in Texas jurors and believe juries should be given as many options as possible to be appropriate for the crime.”

Gov. Rick Perry, who signed Lucio’s 2005 legislation into law, is withholding judgment on Hinojosa’s proposal, his office says.

—John Moritz

Source: http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2940

Human Rights Groups Call on Obama Administration To Implement Recommendations by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

2009-01-14T07:12:00.000-05:00

ATLANTA - January 14 - The Bush administration's last-minute report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was grossly inadequate and full of omissions, according to a coalition of human rights organizations. Instead of reporting on its implementation of recommendations issued by the Committee a year ago, the government yesterday submitted a report that attempts to whitewash the ongoing racial discrimination suffered by people of color in the United States.

"The U.S. government's report fails to address the persistence of structural racism and inequality in this country, such as the continuing widespread racial and ethnic profiling of Muslim and Arab Americans and people of South Asian descent after 9/11," said Jamil Dakwar, Director of the ACLU Human Rights Program. "President-elect Obama can signal a departure from the policies of the Bush administration by taking a fresh look at the Committee recommendations and implementing vigorous and proactive measures against racial and ethnic discrimination."

The Committee is an independent group of experts that oversees compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which the U.S. signed and ratified in 1994. In March 2008, the Committee issued a strongly worded critique of the U.S. record on racial discrimination and recommendations for U.S. compliance with the CERD treaty. Governments are expected to implement the Committee's recommendations, and yesterday's report was the U.S. government's one-year follow up.

According to the human rights coalition, the Bush administration's report glosses over significant issues of racial inequality during his tenure, including the post-9/11 racial profiling of Muslims and people of Arab and South Asian descent; the denial of adequate housing assistance in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; the disproportionate representation of African Americans and Latinos among the 2,500 juveniles sentenced to life sentences without parole; and the deprivation of Western Shoshone American Indians of their ancestral lands.

"Instead of assisting people to return home and recover as recommended by the U.N. committee, the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina is driving African Americans out of our communities in violation of our human rights to non-discrimination and adequate housing," said Monique Harden, Co-Director and Attorney of Advocates for Environmental Human Rights in New Orleans, Louisiana. "The Bush administration is delusional if it thinks that people of color in the Gulf region believe we've been helped by FEMA or any other federal agency."

"The refusal of the Bush administration to correct the racism inherent in current U.S. sentencing practices has resulted in a disproportionate number of children of color being sentenced to life in prison without parole," said Deborah LaBelle, Director of the Juvenile Life Without Parole Initiative. "It is a stain on the U.S. to be the only nation in the world that commits the human rights violation of sentencing children to life in prison, and the fact that it disproportionately affects children of color is one more reason to end this unfair practice."

"It is important that President-elect Obama takes action to ensure racial equality by fulfilling the requirements of the CERD treaty," said Ajamu Baraka, Executive Director of the US Human Rights Network. "We look forward to working with the Obama administration to submit a corrected report and a plan of action for implementing the recommendations of the U.N. committee."

The Bush administration's final report to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination can be viewed online at: www.state.gov/documents/organization/113905.pdf

The Committee's recommendations to the U.S. are available here: www.ushrnetwork.org/files/ushrn/images/linkfiles/CO_USA_adopted-1%20.doc

An U.S. Human Rights Network shadow report to the Committee on the state of racial discrimination in the U.S. and other relevant documents can be found online here: www.ushrnetwork.org/projects/cerd

The ACLU's shadow report to the Committee and more information about CERD is available at: www.aclu.org/cerd

The Human Rights Watch USA World Report 2008 report is available for viewing at http://www.scribd.com/doc/10440320/Human-Rights-Watch-USA-World-Report-2008

Source: http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/01/14-18

New Citizens for Juvenile Justice (CFJJ) Juvenile Life Without Parole Fact Sheet

2008-12-25T21:22:00.000-05:00

Below is a link to the December 2008 Citizens for Juvenile Justice Fact Sheet regarding the subject of juvenile life without parole sentences. Please review the document and circulate widely throughout the country to your contacts.

http://www.cfjj.org/Pdf/LWOP_FactSheet_12_1_08-1.pdf

US: Michigan Moves to End Life Without Parole for Juveniles

2008-12-11T02:37:00.000-05:00

Senate Committee Should Approve Historic Bills Passed by House

December 9, 2008

(Washington, DC) - Michigan's Senate Judiciary Committee should approve four bills abolishing life sentences without parole for juveniles in the state, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to the committee. The practice is cruel, inappropriate, discriminatory, and a violation of human rights, Human Rights Watch said.

"Michigan has 321 young offenders sentenced to die in prison," said Alison Parker, deputy director of the US Program of Human Rights Watch. "Last week, the House rejected the notion that juveniles are beyond redemption. If these bills pass the Senate, they may be able to earn a chance at freedom."

On December 4, Michigan's 110-seat House of Representatives voted to pass the bills, by margins ranging from 12 to 61 votes, and the bills now move to the Senate. Michigan joins California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Nebraska, and the federal government in taking steps toward ending the sentence of life without parole for offenders under age 18.

In a 2008 update to a series of reports on the sentencing of youth to life without parole, Human Rights Watch reported that Michigan's population of youth serving the sentence is the third-highest in the country, just behind Louisiana and Pennsylvania. There are no youth serving the sentence in the rest of the world.

"Michigan and certain other states in the United States stand alone in locking up kids and throwing away the key," Parker said. "Not a single other country in the world incarcerates offenders under 18 for life without providing them some chance of demonstrating rehabilitation and remorse."

In its letter, Human Rights Watch noted that both brain science research and the 2005 Supreme Court case of Roper v. Simmons recognize that some child offenders have the capacity to turn their lives around even after committing a heinous crime. Acknowledging the suffering of victims and their families because of youth crime, the letter points out that many youth serving life without parole did not physically commit the crime for which they were sentenced. Nearly half of youth sentenced to life without parole surveyed in Michigan were sentenced for aiding and abetting or for an unplanned killing in the course of a felony.

Human Rights Watch also highlighted the racial disparities in sentencing. In Michigan, black youth are serving life without parole at a per capita rate 10 times higher than that of white youth.

Two UN oversight and enforcement bodies, the Human Rights Committee and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, have found that the practice of sentencing juveniles to life without parole violates US human rights treaty obligations.

Source: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/12/09/us-michigan-moves-end-life-without-parole-juveniles

Click here to view or download the PDF version of the letter written by Human Rights Watch to the Michigan Senate Judiciary Committee.

"Narcissistic Sovereignty" Has Kept U.S. from Ratifying U.N. Treaty on Children’s Rights

2008-11-24T19:16:00.000-05:00

By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer

CNSNEWS.COM

Monday, November 24, 2008

Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com) – Advocates for a United Nations treaty on children’s rights blamed American arrogance for it not being ratified by the United States, but critics charge signing onto the Convention on the Rights of the Child could mean international law trumping U.S. state and federal laws and the rights of parents to make decisions about raising and educating their children.

The treaty, adopted by the United Nations on Nov. 20, 1989, has been ratified by 193 countries. The United States and Somalia are the two countries that have not ratified it, groups that support ratification said at a press conference at the Capitol on Thursday.

“It might sound dismissive, but I think it has something to do with what I would call, and some other people call, narcissistic sovereignty,” Harold Cook, a non-governmental organization representative at the U.N. and a fellow with the American Psychological Association, told CNSNews.com.

But critics say national self-determination is at the heart of why the treaty should not be ratified.

“This would be one of the most invasive things we could do as far as the sovereignty of our nation,” Michael Smith, president of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, told CNSNews.com.

Smith said that if Congress ratifies the treaty, it would give the United Nations authority to object to federal and state laws that it thinks violate the treaty and give Congress the power to pass laws to make the country comply with its tenants – a fact advocates do not deny.

“Every national government in the world, except the United States, has developed in response to the Convention of the Rights of the Child official detailed national reports on how children are fairing in their country,” Howard Davidson, director of the American Bar Association Center for Children and the Law, said at the press conference.

“And child protection and advocacy watchdog groups have been able to react to those reports by doing their own shadow reporting to the international committee on the rights of the child,” Davidson added.

But Austin Ruse, president of the conservative United Nations watchdog group Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, told CNSNews.com that the conventions reflect a worldview that rejects the idea of sovereign nations.

“They no longer want independent nations deciding what to do, but good citizens in a new international order,” Ruse said.

Ruse said that the very idea of children’s rights is “problematic,” because it sees children as having rights apart from their parents.

“It separates parents from their children,” Ruse told CNSNews.com. “The rights of children can only be seen in the context of the rights and responsibilities of the parents.”

Panelists at the news conference portrayed the convention as a way to help children in the United States whose needs are not being met, including every child having access to health care, good nutrition and safe living conditions.

“The convention’s articles on non-discrimination and adequate standard of living charge us to seek out exactly those children, families, and communities that live on the margins of society and design equitable policies that meet their needs,” said Dr. Jennifer Kasper, who represented the American Academy of Pediatrics at the press conference.

“It states explicitly that nations must not only actively protect children from discrimination, but they also must refrain from actions that may have a discrimination effect on some children.”

Ruse said the United States does not need to be regulated by those he describes as “radicals” on the U.N. committees that oversee such treaties.

“U.S. laws for protecting children are the best in the world,” Ruse said, “and we don’t need a treaty to help us.”

He also said Cook’s remarks about narcissism are a “smear” on the United States and show how his and other groups advocating ratification of the treaty want to promote a liberal global agenda.

“It’s a power grab, pure and simple, by radicals like him,” Ruse said.

Smith said the most dangerous thing about the convention is that rather than building stronger families, it could damage relationships by giving children “rights” to question their parents’ decisions on a range of issues, including discipline, religious training and education.

“It pits children against their parents,” Smith said.

When asked about the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the campaign trail, President-elect Barack Obama expressed a willingness to consider sending the treaty to Congress for ratification.

“It is embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land,” Obama said. “I will review this.”

Groups at the press conference expressed optimism about the new administration, including Meg Gardinier, acting chairwoman of the Campaign for the U.S. Ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

“We are very excited to think we are finally in a moment in time when the U.S. might very well join that ratification process and we can join the other 193 countries who are currently using this important rights treaty as a pivotal guide to improve the child’s survival, protection and development,” Gardinier said.

Source: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/Content/article.aspx?RsrcID=39799

Anita D. Colón Before the Pennsylvania State Senate Judiciary Committee

2008-09-22T23:12:00.000-04:00

As requested by State Senator Steward Greenleaf
Monday, September 22, 2008, 9:30 AM
In Hearing Room #1, North Office Building, Harrisburg, PA
on
Juveniles Sentenced to Life without Parole in Pennsylvania

Good morning Senator Greenleaf and Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. My name is Anita Colón. I am the sister of Robert Holbrook, a man currently serving a life sentence in Pennsylvania for a crime he was convicted of participating in at the age of 16. First, I would like to thank you, Senator Greenleaf, for holding this hearing on the issue of sentencing juveniles to life without the possibility of parole in Pennsylvania and allowing me to testify before you today. I praise both your concern about this issue as well as your willingness to step forward to address it.

My brother Robert was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for a crime that occurred on his sixteenth birthday. That day, lured by the promise of $500 made by a neighborhood drug dealer, Robert agreed to serve as a lookout for four adult males for what he thought was going to be a simple drug deal. My brother soon found himself in the midst of a robbery of a drug dealer’s young wife inside her home. Although he desperately wanted to run once he realized what was happening, he was terrified of the drug dealer that had ordered him to stay, and oblivious to the consequences that would await him if he remained.

As a result of that terrible night, an innocent young woman lost her life and my brother’s freedom was taken away forever. As with the majority of juvenile offenders charged in a murder case, attempts to have the case transferred back to juvenile court were denied. Having no prior experience with the court system, my brother accepted his attorney’s advice and pled guilty to murder generally. This attorney had told us that if he did not do this, the D.A. would seek the death penalty for all involved.

Despite Robert’s age and the fact that he did not participate in the actual murder of this woman, the judge convicted of him of first degree murder for aiding and abetting in the crime and due to the mandatory sentencing laws in Pennsylvania, he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. At the sentencing, the judge stated that my brother had most certainly been the least culpable of the offenders, but that the law did not permit him to use discretion in his sentencing. That was 18 years ago. My brother is now 34 years old. While his friends continued high school, got their drivers licenses, went on to college, got married and now have children, he sits confined to a cell. Most of his early years were spent in isolation, separated from the adult offenders.

My brother’s conviction and incarceration was devastating to my family, especially my mother. My mother wrote to her son in prison each and every day right up until the end of her life four years ago. At that time she was diagnosed with Cancer and within months she passed away. Robert was not even able to attend her funeral because the Department of Corrections had stopped allowing the transportation of lifers to attend funerals, even when their parents die.

In spite of the lack of hope afforded him, my brother has refused to give up on his life. While in prison, he obtained his GED, completed a paralegal course, and became an avid reader and writer. He has had several articles published and works closely with many human rights organizations fighting against injustice and unfair sentencing such as his. Whereas I believe that my brother did deserve to be punished for what he did, I know that he does not deserve to spend the rest of his life, what could turn out to be 60, 70, even 80 years in prison, for one horrible choice he made at barely 16.

Although my initial concern over juveniles sentenced to life without the possibility of parole came as a result of my brother’s conviction, after truly researching this human rights issue, I became an advocate for juvenile justice, and I stand before you today on behalf of all 450 juveniles currently sentenced to die in prison in Pennsylvania.

I feel it is also important to note that I am not only a family member of a juvenile offender but that my family has also experienced senseless tragedy and victimization due to violent crime yet still I advocate for second chances for offenders. As a society we must begin to seek justice as opposed to vengeance and a thirst for revenge and keep in mind that it is not the job of the Criminal Justice System to exact revenge, it is to seek justice.

Much of the background on this serious human rights issue we are addressing today may have been said already, but I feel it is important to highlight several points. The United States is currently the only country in the world known to have children sentenced to and serving life without the possibility of parole. This alone screams that there is something wrong with this policy. The District Attorney’s Office claims that only the worst child offenders are sentenced to life without parole, and only in exceptional circumstances, but that is simply not true.

Here in Pennsylvania, over 50 percent of the prisoners serving life without parole for crimes they committed as juveniles were first time offenders, never having been convicted of a previous crime. And 26 percent were convicted of JLWOP because they participated in a crime that led to a murder but did not themselves kill anyone. In most of the cases, these sentences were a result of mandatory sentencing currently in place for adults convicted of murder.

The U.S. Supreme Court made the distinction between the culpability of juvenile offenders and adult offenders when it abolished the death penalty for juvenile offenders in 2005. Citing both clinical and academic research, they acknowledged that adolescents are immature, incapable of clear adult decision making, and prone to peer pressure. Using this same logic, it is time that Pennsylvania sets the stage for our country, and abolishes life without parole sentences for juvenile offenders.

Our laws do not allow juveniles to assume the same responsibilities as adults (such as driving, voting, drinking, or joining the military) because we know that they are not mature or mentally developed enough to make these decisions about or control these actions. Yet, we hold these same children as accountable as adults when it comes to crime.

Finally, JLWOP, like most forms of unusually harsh punishment, does not serve as a deterrent. FBI Statistics show that from 1994-2004 the number of juveniles arrested for murder rose by over 24%. Research studies have shown that juvenile offenders are more susceptible to rehabilitation and treatment than adult offenders. These children are not beyond redemption, but currently they are without hope. We imprison children for the rest of their lives, without any hope of rehabilitation or re-entry into society and call it justice. Well, I call it inhumane.

While I acknowledge that here in Pennsylvania, especially Philadelphia, those fighting crime face daunting challenges, the answer is not to throw away the lives of our children forever. The fact that a child commits a crime does not negate the fact that they are still a child.

Please understand that I am in no way suggesting that you open the prison gates and free everyone that was incarcerated as a juvenile. Instead, I only ask that you afford them the prospect, not guarantee, of parole after a reasonable period of incarceration. I find it ironic that heinous mass murderers such as Charles Manson are regularly provided the opportunity for parole, yet thousands of children whose crimes could never begin to compare to theirs are not.

These juvenile offenders should be given a second chance, a chance to prove that an extremely poor choice made during adolescence does not have to define who they are or who can become as an adult within society. Senator Greenleaf, Committee members, I implore you to do just that.

Again, thank you for allowing me to testify here today.

Testimony of Elizabeth Calvin, Children’s Rights Advocate, in Support of H.R. 4300 the “Juvenile Justice Accountability

2008-09-18T20:52:00.000-04:00

House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security

September 17, 2008

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for holding this hearing and for inviting me to testify on the important topic of the sentencing of youth who were below the age of 18 at the time of their offenses to life without the possibility of parole. I am here to testify in support of legislation that would end this practice in the United States and provide meaningful access to parole hearings or other review for youth offenders serving this sentence.

The decision to sentence a juvenile to life without the possibility of parole is a decision to sentence that young person to die in prison. There is no time off for good behavior, no opportunity to prove that you have become a different person, responded with remorse and chosen paths of rehabilitation. Next to the death penalty, there is no harsher condemnation, no clearer judgment by our criminal courts that this is a life to be thrown away. The federal government and 39 states sentence under-18 offenders to life without the possibility of parole.

In the US we believe that people under the age of 21 lack the judgment needed to drink alcohol responsibly; that those below 18 are too immature to understand the implications of signing a contract; and that someone younger than 16 cannot assess the risks and consequences inherent in driving a car. Yet, in this country we have also decided that children as young as 13 are mature enough to be sentenced to die in prison.

The United States stands alone in its imposition of this sentence on children. In the US there are currently more than 2,484 people who were convicted of crimes committed as children and sentenced to life without parole. There is not a single individual serving this sentence in the rest of the world.

The Juvenile Justice Accountability and Improvement Act of 2007 would allow states and the federal government to ensure that young offenders receive serious punishments to hold them accountable for actions that have caused enormous suffering to victims and their families. H.R. 4300 would, however, also provide youth—who are different from adults in their capacity to change—with an incentive to work towards rehabilitation in prison. Access to a parole hearing or another form of meaningful review is not a “get out of jail free” card. It is a chance to earn one’s release from prison through rehabilitation. Parole hearings would assess a youth offender’s rehabilitation, and they would also provide a necessary opportunity for victims and their families to be heard.

Through in-depth statistical and legal research, in-person interviews with youth, judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys, lawmakers and victims, Human Rights Watch has investigated the use of life without parole for youth throughout the United States since 2004. We have found that not only is the US now the sole country imposing this sentence on children, but the sentence is also imposed unfairly and disproportionately upon racial and ethnic minorities. Based on our research, we support the passage of H.R. 4300 for three main reasons. The use of this sentence for juveniles is frequently disproportionate, racially discriminatory, and a violation of international law.

One example of the disproportionate use of the sentence is the case of Sara K. Sara was raised by her mother who was addicted to drugs and abusive. She was 16 years old at the time of her crime. At age 11 Sara met “G.G.,” a 31-year-old man. Soon after, he sexually assaulted Sara and began grooming her to become a prostitute. At age 13, Sara began working as a prostitute for G.G. He continued sexually assaulting Sara and using her as a prostitute for almost three years. Shortly after turning 16, Sara shot and killed G.G. She was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

It is not just the facts of individual cases that show the disproportionate use of this sentence. There are more systemic problems. The sentence of life without parole was created for the worst criminal offenders. But we have found that life without parole is not reserved for juveniles who commit the worst crimes or who show signs of being irredeemable criminals. For example, this sentence is routinely used with young people who have never before been in trouble with the law. Human Rights Watch found that nationally an estimated 59 percent of youth sentenced to life without parole are first-time offenders. They had no prior juvenile or criminal record whatsoever—not even a shoplifting conviction. [1]

Additionally, our research found that these young people often acted under the influence or at times specific direction of adults when they committed their crimes. For example, in California, in an estimated 70 percent of cases in which a teen was acting with codefendants, at least one codefendant was an adult. [2] Even more disturbing, however, is that in an estimated 56 percent of cases with adult codefendants, the adult received a lower sentence than the youth who is now serving life without parole. [3]

Also troubling is the fact that often youth sentenced to life without parole were not the primary actors in the crime: they did not pull the trigger; they did not physically commit the crime. Nearly half of youth sentenced to life without parole surveyed in Michigan were sentenced for aiding and abetting or an unplanned murder in the course of a felony. [4] Thirty-three percent of youth sentenced to life without parole whose cases we investigated in Colorado had convictions based on the felony murder rule. [5] In 45 percent of California cases surveyed, youth sentenced to life without parole had not actually committed a murder and were convicted for their role in aiding and abetting or participating in a felony. [6] These are all cases in which someone else was the primary actor. A significant number of these cases involved an attempted crime gone awry—a tragically botched robbery attempt, for example—rather than premeditated murder.

We also have serious concerns that racial discrimination and disparities plague the sentencing of youth to life without parole throughout the United States. On average across the country, black youth are serving life without parole at a per capita rate that is 10 times that of white youth. Many states have racial disparities that are far greater. Among the 26 states with five or more youth offenders serving life without parole for which we have race data, the highest black-to-white ratios are in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and California, where black youth are between 18 and 48 times more likely to be serving a sentence of life without parole than white youth. [7]

Poor legal assistance afforded to many teen defendants appears to further compromise just outcomes. Some of those Human Rights Watch interviewed or surveyed described a level of legal representation that falls well below professional norms. In California, one of the most salient errors reported to Human Rights Watch is attorneys’ failure to adequately represent youth offenders at the sentencing hearing. In 46 percent of cases, respondents reported that their attorney failed to argue for a lower sentence.

We support H.R. 4300 because it is sound public policy. Lawmakers do not face a choice between being “soft on crime” and supporting life without parole for teen offenders. Lawmakers can protect community safety, save on incarceration costs, and save youth from a lifetime in prison.

Proponents of life without parole believe the sentence is necessary in order to ensure retribution—that society metes out the worst punishment for the worst offenses. However, while teens can commit the same acts as adults, by virtue of their immaturity they are not as blameworthy or culpable. Recent developments in neuroscience have found that teens do not have adults’ developed abilities to think, to weigh consequences, to make sound decisions, to control their impulses, and to resist group pressures; their brains are anatomically different, still evolving into the brains of adults. These findings suggest that sentencing laws should be revised to ensure that youth offenders are not sentenced as if they were adults.

Supporters of the life without parole sentence also claim that teens who pause to consider the consequences before committing crimes will be deterred if they face harsh sentences such as life in prison without parole. But young people are less likely than adults to pause before acting, and when they do, research has failed to show that the threat of adult punishment deters them from crime. Deterrence is also unlikely given research showing that adolescents cannot really grasp the true significance of the sentence.

Some proponents claim that incapacitation justifies the use of life without parole sentences. No one can deny that life without parole makes some contribution to public safety to the extent that locking up youth offenders prevents them from committing additional crimes. It is undeniable, however, that many youth offenders can be rehabilitated and become productive members of society. The need to incapacitate a particular offender ends once he or she has been rehabilitated. There is no basis for believing that all or even most of the teens who receive life without parole sentences would otherwise have engaged in a life of crime. Our research indicates that many teens received life without parole for their first offense. There is little in their histories to warrant the assumption that they would not mature and be rehabilitated if they were spared a lifetime in prison.

Finally, we support H.R. 4300 because the US practice of sentencing youth to life without parole violates international law. International law prohibits life without parole sentences for those who commit their crimes before the age of 18, a prohibition that is universally applied outside of the United States. Oversight and enforcement bodies for two treaties to which the United States is a party (the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination) have found the practice of sentencing juvenile offenders to life without parole to be a clear violation of US treaty obligations.

There is movement to change these laws occurring across the country. Legislative efforts are pending in California, Florida, Illinois, and Michigan and there are grassroots movements in Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Washington. Most recently, Colorado outlawed life without parole for children in 2006.

H.R. 4300 would eliminate life without parole for juvenile offenders in the United States and bring our country into compliance with international law and standards of justice. It would recognize that youth are different from adults and provide incentives for rehabilitation that reflect their unique ability to change. Human Rights Watch urges you to support this bill.

[1] Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, The Rest of Their Lives: Life Without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States, October 2005, http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us1005/, pp. 27-28.

[2] Human Rights Watch, When I Die, They’ll Send Me Home: Youth Sentenced to Life without Parole in California, January 2008, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/us0108/, p. 35.

[3] Ibid, p. 36.

[4] American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, “Second Chances, Juveniles Serving Life without Parole in Michigan’s Prisons,” 2004, http://www.aclumich.org/pubs/juvenilelifers.pdf (accessed September 2, 2008), p. 4.

[5] Human Rights Watch, Thrown Away: Children Sentenced to Life without Parole in Colorado, February 2005, http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us0205/, pp.18-19.

[6] Human Rights Watch, When I Die, They’ll Send Me Home: Youth Sentenced to Life without Parole in California, January 2008, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/us0108/, p. 21.

[7] Human Rights Watch, Executive Summary, The Rest of Their Lives: Life without Parole for Youth Offenders in the United States in 2008, May 2008, http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/2008/us1005/us1005execsum.pdf, pp.5-7.

Source: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/09/17/testimony-elizabeth-calvin-children-s-rights-advocate-support-hr-4300-juvenile-justi

The Case for Juvenile Courts

2008-08-14T13:45:00.000-04:00

Editorial
The New York Times
August 13, 2008

This country made a terrible mistake when it began routinely trying youthful offenders as adults. This get-tough approach was supposed to deter crime. But a growing number of government-financed studies have shown that minors prosecuted as adults commit more crimes — and are more likely to become career criminals — than ones processed through juvenile courts.

The value of specialized courts for young people is underscored in a new report from the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. After evaluating the available research, it concludes that transferring juveniles for trial and sentencing to an adult criminal court has increased recidivism, especially among violent offenders, and has led many young people to a permanent life of crime.

The juvenile justice system was one of the great reforms of the Progressive Era. The push to go back to trying children as adults began in the mid-1990s, when state lawmakers fixated on a few, high-profile crimes by young people and — convinced there was a youth crime wave — came up with a politically convenient solution.

Young people who commit serious, violent crimes deserve severe punishment. But reflexively transferring juvenile offenders — many of whom are accused of nonviolent crimes — into the adult system is not making anyone safer. When they are locked up with adults, young people learn criminal behaviors. They are also deprived of the counseling and family support that they would likely get in the juvenile system, which is more focused on rehabilitation. And once they are released, their felony convictions make it hard for them to find a job and rebuild their lives.

Nearly every state now has laws that encourage prosecutors to try minors as adults. The recent studies of this approach should lead legislatures to abandon these counterproductive policies.

A version of this article appeared in print on August 14, 2008, on page A22 of the New York edition.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/opinion/14thu3.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary Passes S.3155

2008-08-13T09:49:00.000-04:00

On July 31, 2008, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary marked-up and passed, by voice vote, S. 3155, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2008, bi-partisan legislation to reauthorize the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) and originally co-sponsored by Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-PA), and Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI).

As introduced, S. 3155:

Encourages states to make critical improvements to juvenile justice systems, including the avoidance of dangerous practices and the adoption of evidence based practices;
Gives states authority to retain delinquent offenders under juvenile jurisdiction after they have reached the age of majority, in keeping with state law;
Places common sense limits on the pretrial detention of juveniles in adult jails;
Creates a meaningful approach for reducing racial and ethnic disparities in juvenile justice by strengthening the disproportionate minority contact (DMC) core requirement;
Dramatically increases federal authorizations for core juvenile justice programs;
Creates new incentives for improving mental health and substance abuse assessment, treatment and diversion, as well as for improving case management and re-entry services:
Reaffirms the federal-state partnership by supporting states’ efforts to comply with JJDPA core requirements, strengthening research and technical assistance to be conducted by the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Policy (OJJDP), and increasing transparency on the part of OJJDP and the states.

During the July 31 mark-up, S. 3155 was further strengthened to:

Phase-out use of the valid court order over a three-year period, with a 1-2 year hardship extension for those states that need additional time to make needed changes;
Sharpen the focus on mental health and substance abuse services in State Plans and add opportunities for behavioral health improvements under the new Incentive Grants program; and
Improve fiscal and performance accountability by juvenile justice-related agencies at the federal level.

The ACT4JJ Campaign has developed a two-page summary of the bill as introduced. Click below to view.

ACT4JJ Summary of S. 3155

S. 3155: Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2008

2008-07-30T08:10:00.000-04:00

Here is the information we have located on S. 3155 - Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2008:

The Senate Judiciary Committee will consider S. 3155, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2008, for markup in the coming days. The bill was introduced June 18, 2008.

This legislation will reauthorize the Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention Act (JJDPA), which has provided states and localities with federal standards and supports for improving juvenile justice and delinquency prevention practices, and has contributed to safeguards for youth, families and communities since its inception in 1974.

The bill adds critical additions to the JJPDA to keep youth out of adult jails and prisons. Youth placed in adult jails with adults are at risk of physical and sexual assault. According to the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 21% and 13% of all substantiated victims of inmate-on-inmate sexual violence in jails in 2005 and 2006 respectively, were youth under the age of 18, though only 1% of inmates are juveniles.

It strengthens provisions to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system. This is a critical change because at every level of the juvenile justice system, youth of color are disproportionately represented. This overrepresentation is evidenced at many stages of the juvenile justice system process.

It focuses on conditions of confinement in juvenile facilities, and assists States in their capacity to comply with the federal law. S. 3155 requires States to collect data regarding restraints and isolation and to adopt policies and procedures to eliminate the use of dangerous practices in juvenile detention and correctional facilities, such as hog-tying, use of pepper spray, and any forms of sexual abuse. It also ensures that States will receive technical assistance to comply with the law, and for States not in compliance, JJDPA funds that would otherwise have been withheld can be used by the States as improvement grants to regain compliance in that specific area.

Source: Campaign for Youth Justice

The following information is available at: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110-3155.

This bill is in the first step in the legislative process. Introduced bills go first to committees that deliberate, investigate, and revise them before they go to general debate. The majority of bills never make it out of committee. Keep in mind that sometimes the text of one bill is incorporated into another bill, and in those cases the original bill, as it would appear here, would seem to be abandoned.

Sponsor:
Sen. Patrick Leahy [D-VT]

Co-Sponsors [as of 2008-07-26]:
Sen. Norm Coleman [R-MN]
Sen. Susan Collins [R-ME]
Sen. Richard Durbin [D-IL]
Sen. Dianne Feinstein [D-CA]
Sen. Herbert Kohl [D-WI]
Sen. Olympia Snowe [R-ME]
Sen. Arlen Specter [R-PA]

You can read and download the bill from our file-sharing site at the following link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/4285876/S-3155-Juvenile-Justice-and-Delinquency-Prevention-Reauthorization-Act-of-2008

Life Without Parole Unfair to Juveniles?

2008-07-25T08:31:00.000-04:00

by Dana DiFilippo
Philadelphia Daily News
difilid@phillynews.com
July 25, 2008

For being a traitorous friend, Stacey Torrance was thrown into jail for life.

Torrance was just 14 when an older cousin convinced him in 1988 to lure a rich kid to a North Philadelphia corner, where the cousin and an accomplice kidnapped and later shot and strangled him.

Torrance didn't kill 16-year-old Alexander Porter and insisted he never knew of his cousin's murderous intent. But 20 years later, he sits in a state prison in Chester, with no prospect for parole or eventual freedom.

Such cases concern lawmakers like state Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montco-Bucks, who said he began to question the system's fairness when he learned that Pennsylvania leads the nation in the number of juveniles sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Greenleaf will convene a public hearing on Sept. 22 in Harrisburg to examine whether legislative relief is warranted.

"The purpose of this fact-finding session is to hear the experts in regards to what's going on and make sure there's no injustice being done," Greenleaf said.

Pennsylvania has 444 people serving life-without-parole sentences for crimes they committed as juveniles, according to Human Rights Watch. Nationally, 2,484 lifers are behind bars for crimes they committed as juveniles. No youth outside the United States are serving such sentences, said Alison Parker, deputy director of the group's U.S. program.

Pennsylvania also has the dubious distinction of ranking second nationally, behind Connecticut, in the racial disparity of juveniles sentenced to life without parole, Parker wrote in a report she released in May. In Pennsylvania, she said, black juveniles are 1.5 times more likely to be sentenced to life without parole as white youth, despite commensurate crimes.

Hearings like Greenleaf's are crucial to reforming the system, Parker said.

"We're absolutely supportive of any moves by legislators both at the state and the federal level to eliminate the sentence of life without parole for children," said Parker, who has studied the issue since 2005. "The sentence violates human rights; it's unjust and inappropriate for a child."

Some experts strongly disagree.

"We don't think it needs reform; [life without parole] is only applied in the most serious cases," said Christopher Mallios, assistant chief of District Attorney Lynne Abraham's legislation unit. "It's used because of the horrible nature of the crime, [when the defendant has] an extensive record as a juvenile and there's a finding that they're no longer amenable to treatment in the juvenile system."

Mallios, an assistant district attorney, said his office likely will participate in Greenleaf's public hearing.

The issue is landing on more states' legislative agendas.

Lawmakers in California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan and Nebraska have considered providing parole relief for juvenile lifers, Parker said. Colorado in 2006 became the only state to pass legislation eliminating life-without-parole sentences for juveniles, she said.

"The idea is simply to give them access to a parole hearing, which is not a guarantee of release," Parker said. "It's not: 'Let's throw open the jail doors and let out dangerous people.' It's simply: 'Grant them a hearing.' "

At least one federal lawmaker also has moved to make early release possible for juvenile lifers.

Rep. Robert C. Scott of Virginia last December introduced the Juvenile Justice Accountability and Improvement Act, a bill that would require that juveniles get at least one parole hearing during the first 15 years of their life sentence, followed by at least one parole hearing every three years thereafter.

That bill was referred to a crime subcommittee in January.

Experts say Pennsylvania's top ranking results from tough state laws such as charging murder suspects as adults regardless of their age.

Some prosecutors argue that some kids commit such heinous crimes that they deserve to lose their freedom for good. But civil-rights activists say life-without-parole sentences are unfair for young people who are impaired by poor judgment and have a chance of being rehabilitated.

Source: http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20080725_Life_without_parole_unfair_to_juveniles_.html