life sentence: Prison with light and shadow spelling out life through a barred window

Opinion: Policymakers, Time To End Juvenile Life Sentencing

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A viral video in August showed an 8-year-old boy being arrested at his elementary school in handcuffs that slid off his tiny wrists. A police officer can be heard telling the child, “You’re going to jail.” Sadly, this is just the latest disturbing example of the uniquely American phenomenon of vilifying and overpolicing our nation’s children. 

America incarcerates more people under 18 than any other nation and is the only country in the world to condemn its children to die behind bars, with no chance of freedom or hope for redemption. For these “juvenile lifers,” no matter their progress in treatment or rehabilitation, their home from the age of 15 — or whenever they were sentenced as a child — is a jail cell.    

This is not only a draconian approach at odds with undeniable science showing that youth who have committed even serious offenses can be successfully rehabilitated, it also perpetuates unconscionable racial inequities. The majority of kids we throw away through these juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentences are Black. Our system is sadly predisposed to see the humanity in white children more than children of color; approximately 70% of children sentenced to life without parole have been Black since 2012.

Henry Montgomery

Inmate From Supreme Court Case Rejected for Parole a Second Time

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It’s now been three years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Henry Montgomery should have a chance to earn parole, because he’d been a teenager at the time of his crime. But on Thursday, the Louisiana parole board voted against parole for Montgomery for the second time. So Montgomery, now 72, will remain in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, working five days a week at the prison silk-screen shop, as he has for decades. “I’m almost at a loss for words at how it is possible that Henry, yet again, was denied. One would have thought that he would be one of the first,” said Marsha Levick, chief legal officer of the Juvenile Law Center.

Henry Montgomery of Supreme Court Case Denied Parole

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The man whose case was central to the Supreme Court's Montgomery v. Louisiana was denied parole today by a three-man panel, the Baton Rouge Advocate reported. Henry Montomery, 71, is serving a life sentence for first-degree murder in the 1963 killing of an East Baton Rouge Sheriff's deputy, when he was 17.

Attorneys Struggle to Address JLWOP Resentencing Hearings in Louisiana

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More than 23 years ago, 15-year-old Damien Riley walked into the Legends Comics and Sports Cards store, browsed through the cards, then aimed his gun at the back of the head of 41-year-old store owner Michael Kleban, who was sitting at the counter listening to the radio.