I find it sad that we would ever incarcerate a juvenile for life. With all of the strides in our understanding of what leads to certain behaviors and what kinds of influences really can help "reform" young people, it seems barbaric.
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I'm afraid it's more depressing than that. These are early teenagers that end up living their life, from age 13-17 to death, in prison, for something stupid that they did. Tanzania has one such case, South Africa has four, and Israel has between four and seven. The US has
two thousand, two hundred and twenty five such cases. Every other country in the world has zero. In fact, there are only a handful of countries that even have the legal allowance of such a sentence, but they rarely if ever use it.
The average age at admission to prison was eighteen years old; the youngest entered prison at age fourteen and the oldest was twenty-six years old. Nevertheless, 29 percent, or just under one-third of all the offenders studied, were admitted to adult penitentiaries while they were still children. I'll let you take one guess what happens to kids in an adult prison:
Sheriffs took me to the Western Penitentiary. They lied to the warden telling him I were eighteen, which I had not yet become. I were housed in an open poorly supervised unit, and that evening a group of large adult men rushed into my cell, holding me down they began pulling my clothes off while another took a syringe over to a spoon that another inmate were holding a lighter under. He drew up whatever was in the spoon. I were then injected with whatever it were. And then raped. Once found by the officers I were taken to a holding area, cleaned up, and placed on a van to another prison at around 3:00 am.
I was the target of covert sexual predators. Adults would pretend to be your best friend to get close to you, then they would try you . . . Officers would be hard on me more so than the adults for they believe that the younger inmates need rougher treatment
Penitentiaries in the United States are not designed to further rehabilitation, and youth offenders sentenced to life without parole are often barred from participating in the few programs that do exist. Youth offenders serving life without parole face an additional and daunting challenge in they must come to terms with the fact that they will live in prison for the rest of their lives. Unsurprisingly, the suicide rate is through the roof. LWOPs cannot participate in many rehabilitative, educational, vocational training or other assignments available to other inmates with parole dates . . . The supposed rationality is that LWOPs are beyond salvagability and would just be taking a spot away from someone who will actually return to society someday.
Other offenders serving life without parole dream of playing a positive, redeeming role in society at some hypothetical point in the future. Troy L., who was fifteen when he murdered his abusive father, was interviewed for this report at age twenty-four in June 2004. He wrote in a subsequent letter:
I would be ever grateful, in fact, for the chance to spend my life now for some good reason. I would go to the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan or Israel, or jump on the first manned mission to Mars . . . .f the state were to offer me some opportunity to end my life doing some good, rather than a slow-wasting plague to the world, it would be a great mercy to me.
Some offenders manage to avoid drugs and alcohol in prison, a relevant accomplishment when substance abuse was a factor in their earlier criminal behavior. Thomas M., who was fifteen at the time of his offense and was interviewed in prison at age twenty, told a researcher for this report:
My dad is an alcoholic and he used to beat my mom real bad, and me. I remember one Christmas my dad got so drunk he threw my mom through the Christmas tree and it fell out the window. It can't get much worse than that . . . At that time [of the crime] I thought I was cool, getting high, cruising around on the streets with my so-called friends. Since I've been in prison, I've had plenty of opportunities to smoke cigarettes, do drugs, homemade liquor. But mark my words, I'll never smoke or drink or do drugs whether I spend the rest of my life in prison, or whether I am free. All I want is a chance. I've come a long way as far as who I am and what I want in life. . . . I've really changed
Criminal punishment in the United States can serve four goals: rehabilitation, retribution, deterrence, and incapacitation. The effectiveness of any punishment-whether life in prison or a week in jail-should be measured against the yardstick of these four goals and should accord with the widely accepted corollary that no punishment should be more severe than necessary to achieve these stated goals.
Sentencing children to life without parole fails to measure up on all counts.
