USA TODAY International Edition
Life without parole is wrong even if kids kill
It ignores brain research and is tainted by racism
No child should be sentenced to life in prison without parole even if they commit horrendous crimes. Why? Because, as former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy once noted, “any parent knows” children are different from adults. They lack the judgment and self- control that come with adulthood. Absent these qualities, imposing severe punishment is unjust and inappropriate.
As Kennedy rightly observed, a “lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility are found in youth more often than in adults and are more understandable among the young. These qualities often result in impetuous and ill- considered actions and decisions.”
Scientists now recognize that the development of the human brain, and the inhibitions that go along with it, are not complete until well into the 20s. It is unjust to ignore those facts and treat child criminals the same way we treat adult offenders. We must respond not only to what they do, but also to who they are.
This is widely recognized in other nations, and juvenile life without parole ( LWOP) is forbidden by human rights treaties. The United States is the only country that still allows this practice. And life without parole in America is a draconian punishment.
Supreme Court ruling
Yet last week, a bitterly divided Supreme Court upheld this sentence in the case of Brett Jones, who was 15 when he murdered his grandfather during a heated argument about Jones’ girlfriend. The court disregarded brain science and inflicted incalculable damage on juveniles who receive LWOP sentences as well as on the society that countenances such cruelty.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who clerked for and succeeded Justice Kennedy, wrote for the six- justice majority that it is constitutional to impose LWOP sentences on children so long as the law affords the judge imposing such a sentence the discretion to take into account the defendant’s age.
In a disingenuous sleight of hand that barely concealed the court’s conservative activism, Kavanagh claimed his decision was consistent with a line of cases in which the Supreme Court had made it increasingly difficult to impose severe punishments on youthful offenders. Even Justice Clarence Thomas, who concurred with Kavanagh, said it was based on a “strained reading” of applicable precedents.
Those precedents supported leniency in the treatment of juvenile offenders and came very close to closing the door on LWOP sentences for children. Thursday’s decision ensures that LWOP for juveniles will no longer be rare or reserved for those deemed “irreparable.”
It was not until the 1990s when most of this country’s juvenile lifers were sentenced. This was a a time when politicians and commentators stoked public fear of child “super predators.”
“We’re talking about kids who have absolutely no respect for human life and no sense of the future. … They are perfectly capable of committing the most heinous acts of physical violence for the most trivial reasons,” political scientist John DiIulio wrote in 1995.
Abandoning hope
Many states have recently abolished LWOP for juveniles, but half still permit it. At the start of 2020, 1,465 people were serving LWOP sentences for crimes committed when they were children. Many of them grew up in homes and neighborhoods marked by high levels of violence and abuse. In a 2012 study, 79% of them said they had witnessed violence in their homes and nearly half had been physically abused. They often were brought up in extreme poverty and without adequate schooling.
While we should not downplay the seriousness of their crimes or the pain they impose of their victims, the juvenile LWOP population looks more like children who were uncared for by their families and by the larger society than the group described by DiIulio.
Juvenile LWOP sentencing, like comparable sentencing for adults, is also tainted by racial discrimination. The Sentencing Project reports that “while 23.2% of juvenile arrests for murder involve an African American suspected of killing a white person, 42.4% of JLWP sentences are for an African American convicted of this crime.”
When we sentence a child to die in prison, we assume nothing could change our assessment of what that person deserves. This is an abandonment of hope. Brett Jones, now 31, recognized the cost and injustice when he told the Mississippi court that initially heard his appeal for resentencing, “I’m not the same person I was when I was 15. ... I’ve become a pretty decent person in life. And I’ve pretty much taken every avenue that I could possibly take in prison to rehabilitate myself.”
Thursday’s Supreme Court decision is a significant step in the wrong direction. Instead of making it easier to sentence children to life without parole, the United States should join the rest of the world by eliminating life prison sentence without parole for juvenile offenders and giving hope a chance.