In the Wake of Miller v. Alabama, States Should Rethink How to Hold Youthful Offenders Accountable

Many states are scrambling to figure out how to comply with the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. Alabama that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for children are cruel and unusual punishments.

The best advice is simple: slow down and take advantage of this opportunity to rethink how you should hold youth accountable for serious crimes.

The June ruling struck down all statutes that require a child to be sentenced to die in prison. In doing so, the Court reaffirmed its recent holdings that require children to be treated differently in the justice system. People now serving mandatory life sentences without parole for crimes committed as youth are due resentencing hearings, which must take into account mitigating factors such as their age at the time of the crime, family history, role in the crime, and other relevant factors.

In many ways, the Court’s ruling was another reaction against the wrongheaded policymaking of the 1980s and 1990s, when upticks in crime among youth led academic researchers and other opinion leaders to predict a major wave of violent crime by “juvenile superpredators.” Policymakers reacted with fear-based policy reforms making it easier to try children as adults and making more extreme sentences available to them.

These juvenile crime waves never materialized, and the superpredator theory has been debunked and acknowledged as inaccurate by originators. The Miller ruling has provided an opportunity for states to revisit the decisions that ignore the unique capacity of children to mature and change their behavior, and have caused prison budgets to balloon while having little discernible effect on public safety.

The ruling does not require swift action by either the legislative or the executive branches of government. The worst approach would be to repeat past mistakes of making politically-motivated policy changes that fail to appropriately reflect the unique characteristics of children. The Supreme Court precedent is clear: the states need to take a long, hard look at how they hold young people accountable for serious crimes, with a consideration of their age and capacity to change.

Already, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad has demonstrated what not to do. Earlier this summer, he “commuted” the mandatory life without parole sentence of 38 youth offenders eligible for relief under Miller to mandatory 60-year terms. Newspaper editorial pages and Iowa’s U.S. Senator, Tom Harkin, have already spoken out against the move, noting that it conflicts with the Court’s requirement for individualized sentencing that considers mitigating factors.

Policymakers should look to existing models for holding children accountable, such as from Missouri and countries like Germany and New Zealand, which focus on rehabilitation and reintegration into society. These models not only balance retribution and rehabilitation, but are also cost-effective.

Research has proven that the vast majority of children age out of criminal behavior over time. Meanwhile, the average cost of a life sentence that begins in one’s late teens is $2 million, once the increased medical costs of old-age are considered. Keeping aging people locked up forever serves no public safety purpose and wastes taxpayer dollars. If we check in on children later in life to see if they have been rehabilitated and release those who have, states can use the taxpayer dollars that would otherwise be spent on prisoner medical care and housing for crime prevention programs and supportive services for victims, which are sorely underfunded.

The Supreme Court has granted states with an unprecedented opportunity to think holistically about how we want to address the needs of both victims and youthful offenders. States ought to think seriously about the message that the Supreme Court is sending: your old approach to punishing children is unconstitutional. Quick fixes are not sufficient.

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Jody  Kent Lavy is Director of the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth.