End life sentences for N.M. juveniles

Children and adolescents who become involved with the justice system often do so with complex medical, mental health, developmental, social and legal needs. Most have been exposed to childhood trauma or adversary, which both contribute to their involvement with the justice system and negatively impact their health and well-being

Despite improving trends in juvenile arrests and confinement, justice-involved youth continue to experience significant barriers to reaching their full potential. Barriers such as racial and ethnic bias exposure to adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, and unmet physical and mental health needs continue to interfere with the optimal health and development of youth involved with the justice system.

Ideally, contact with the juvenile justice system would serve as an opportunity to improve the health and developmental trajectory of youth by identifying precipitants to involvement with the justice system and implementing services to address the young person’s needs. Unfortunately, for many youth, involvement with the justice system serves as nothing more than another traumatic experience.

Research has established a significant impact of childhood trauma adversity or ACEs on the health and well-being of children. Multiple studies have documented high prevalence rates of childhood trauma among justice-involved youth, with many studies finding that over 90% of youth in the justice system have experience at least one form of childhood trauma.

Over the past two decades advances in social developmental and neurologic science have transformed our understanding of health and well-being across the life course. It is recognized that trauma, adversary and ACEs are associated with maladaptive stress response, changes in brain architecture and poor physical mental and behavioral health outcomes.

Advances in neuroscience and neuroimaging have demonstrated numerous structural and functional changes in the brain occur during the period of adolescence. The prefrontal cortex is the area of the brain that is responsible for a variety of executive functions including decision making, impulse control and emotional regulation.

This brain maturation is not complete until early adulthood. The developmental immaturity of the prefrontal cortex may contribute to the behaviors that lead to contact with the juvenile justice system.

Over the past 15 years, the U.S. Supreme Court issued several decisions limiting extreme sentences for juvenile offenders, declaring unconstitutional capital punishment of individuals who committed crimes as a juvenile (under age 18) and abolishing mandatory life-without-parole sentences for crimes committed as a juvenile.

However, it is still permissible to impose life without parole for juveniles after judicial consideration of individual case circumstances. The United States is the only country in the world that sentences juveniles to life without the possibility of parole.

The 2020 American Academy of Pediatrics policy “Advocacy and Collaborative Health Care for Justice-Involved Youth” makes many recommendations to improve the juvenile justice system. A major recommendation is to abolish excessively punitive and developmentally inappropriate practices such as life with parole for juveniles. Pediatricians throughout New Mexico understand the urgent need for reform. Our New Mexico legislators and our New Mexico governor need to pass, sign and implement Senate Bill 64, No Life Sentence for Juveniles.