hands in handcuffs against black background

40 years ago, the US started sending more and more kids to prison without hope of release, but today, it’s far more rare – what happened?

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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.

NY Legislation- Parole, Solitary: Man in sweats, sneakers, sunglasses, hat speaks on lawn with fake graves behind him.

NY Bills on Parole and Solitary the Focus of Overnight Demonstration

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ALBANY, N.Y. —A makeshift cemetery created outside the New York State Capitol building was the backdrop to a last-ditch overnight demonstration to push for three longshot criminal justice bills organizers helped write. Organizers for Release Aging People from Prison (RAPP) and the New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement (#Haltsolitary) had worked on three bills that focused on solitary confinement, paroling certain elderly inmates and changing parole criteria.

parole: 2 men, 2 women sit at table on low platform facing audience, giant sign that says sheriff at left

3 on Florida Commission Decide Parole of Thousands of Inmates

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Inside a carpeted room at the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office, an audience of about 75 settled into rows of banquet chairs. In the center of the room was a table, topped with microphones and a box of tissues that would be plucked from liberally over the next few hours.

Elderly person in prison cell holding onto the bars

Florida’s Longest-Serving Inmates: They Get Older, Sicker and More Well-behaved

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An hour south of Miami, down the street from an alligator farm, a security guard buzzes visitors into the Homestead Correctional Institution. Each guest’s bags are run through a rickety metal detector and he or she is issued a panic button — a portable alarm that can be clipped to a waistband and pressed if an inmate attacks. 

New York: Man with beard, mustache in blue shirt talks to woman.

With Plunging Crime Rate, New York Experts Dreaming Big

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When the moderator informally polled the audience at a criminal justice discussion held at the New York Law School on whether probation and parole should be abolished, almost half the audience — mostly criminal justice practitioners and stakeholders — raised their hands.

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.