At the heart of this issue is whether it is appropriate to sentence children to die in prison, with no chance of being considered for release. Half a century ago, offenders in the U.S. of any age were rarely sentenced to life without parole, and it was not until 1978 that states began trying youths as adults. Between 1985 and 2001, however, youths convicted of murder were actually more likely to enter prison with a life sentence than adults convicted of the same crime.
While locked in a California prison for juveniles, Paul Bocenegra got his first shave, sprouted his first patch of chest hair and, he said, learned to fight at that facility, dubbed "gladiator school" because of its levels of violence. "I was condemned to prison to die in a cage at 17 years old," said Bocanegra, now 48, who was tried as an adult in 1992 and served 25 years of what was supposed to be a life-without-parole prison sentence.
The New Mexico Corrections Department has lost track of nearly two dozen prisoners in its custody who are serving life sentences for crimes they committed as children, an error that could keep these “juvenile lifers” from getting a chance at freedom under a bill likely to be passed by the state Legislature within days.
The Tennessee Supreme Court has ruled that mandatory life sentences for youth are cruel and unusual punishment. According to that 3-to-2 vote by the court late last year, those convicted of murder as minors must be allowed a chance at parole after a minimum of 25 years in prison.
LaKeith Smith, under Alabama’s felony murder law allowing prosecutors to charge a person considered an accomplice to a crime, was faulted for his friend’s death. No evidence that the teen fired or possessed a gun was presented during the trial. Smith, now 23, should never have been in that group of boys, his mother said, making trouble with them. He also should not be serving a 55-year sentence in a maximum-security prison...
Within months of his release from a lifetime imprisonment sentence in Louisiana's 18,000-acre prison in Angola, La., Andrew Hundley, then 34, enrolled in junior college and founded the Louisiana Parole Project, a nonprofit focused on advocacy and reentry for former juvenile lifers. Under a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Hundley, who’d been sentenced in 1997, when he was 15, was released after serving 19 years at Angola. Hundley had the chance to start over, finish college and start a family. But many of the men and women he works with through the Parole Project are older and entered the Louisiana prison system at a time when there were no educational opportunities, especially for lifers.
Researchers found almost all of 112 Philadelphians who have been released from lifetime prison sentences said they participated in some form of prison programming, but 53 percent reported having been restricted from vocational programs such as barbering (Pennsylvania prioritizes people who have less than five years left on their sentences for vocational training). “A lot of these guys who did end up taking advantage of the college programming were able to enroll through their perseverance as opposed to these programs being allocated for them,” said study co-author Tarika Daftary-Kapur, professor of justice studies at Montclair State University in New Jersey, which conducted the survey.
Michael is one of dozens of people in New Mexico who received what juvenile justice reformists call “de-facto life sentences” — sentences so long they will likely never be released — for crimes committed as minors. He is a vocal supporter of youth sentencing reforms that died in the state legislature earlier this year, part of a national movement to rehabilitate juvenile offenders and make them eligible for parole earlier.
The U.S. Supreme Court last month affirmed that lifetime imprisonment without the possibility of parole is just punishment for Brett Jones, who was convicted in 2005 of murdering his grandfather, a tragedy that the then 15-year-old said was an act of self-defense.
ByButa Biberaj, Carol Siemon and Miriam Aroni Krinsky |
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.
