Amnesty urges US to ban life sentences for youths

By Jill Serjeant

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Youths too young to buy cigarettes
legally and children with stuffed animals on their beds are
being sentenced in the United States to life in prison without
parole in a practice condemned on Wednesday by two rights
groups.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said in a
report there are at least 2,225 people incarcerated in the
United States who have been sentenced to spend the rest of
their lives in prison for crimes they committed when they were
under the age of 18.

The report urged the U.S. president and Congress to abolish
life sentences without parole for children convicted of federal
crimes, saying it was never appropriate for youth offenders.

It said that U.S. state and federal law recognized the
immaturity and irresponsibility of children by typically
establishing 18 as minimum age to vote, sit on a jury or get
married without parental consent.

“Yet in 42 states and under federal law, the commission of
a serious crime by children under 18 — indeed in some states
children as young as 10 — transforms them instantly into
adults for criminal justice purposes,” the report said.

“Virtually all countries in the world reject the punishment
of life without parole for child offenders. … And all
countries except the United States and Somalia have ratified
the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which explicitly
forbids ‘life imprisonment without the possibility of release’
for ‘offenses committed by persons below 18 years of age.”‘

CATCHY PHRASE

Amnesty and Human Rights Watch spent two years interviewing
judges, lawyers, prison authorities and some 370 people now
serving life without parole for crimes they committed as
teenagers.

“‘Adult time for adult crime’ may be a catchy phrase but it
reflects a poor understanding of criminal justice principles,”
the report said, arguing that it was well-established that the
brains of juveniles were less developed than those of adults.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this year that in death
penalty cases, those under 18 were “categorically less
culpable” than adults even when they commit the same crime, it
noted.

“I’m a former cop. I’m a true believer in law and order.
But my son was a child when this happened. He wasn’t thinking
like an adult and he wasn’t an adult. … How is it that the
law can treat him as if he is one?” the father of one youth
offender told the researchers.

Despite the public perception that children who get life
without parole have long records of serious crimes, the report
said 59 percent received the sentence for their first criminal
conviction.

The vast majority of those serving such sentences were
convicted of murder. But 26 percent are there because they took
part in a robbery or burglary during which someone else did the
killing, it found.

The researchers said racial disparities in sentencing were
marked, with black youths receiving life without parole at a
rate 10 times greater than for white youth.

There are also significant differences among states in the
use of the sentence. Virginia, Louisiana and Michigan had youth
rates of life without parole sentencing between three and 7-1/2
times the national average, while eight states prohibit the
sentence for youth offenders.

In prison, young people serving life without the
possibility of release are subject to sexual predators, gangs
and violence. They are often denied educational and vocational
programs available to prisoners who will someday be released.

“Seems like … since we’re sentenced to life in prison,
society says, ‘Well, we locked them up, they are disposed of,
removed,”‘ one young offender told a researcher for the report.