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ADULT CRIME FOR
ADULT TIME: Life Without Parole for Juvenile Killers and Violent Teens
the latest and most accurate research on the actual JLWOP picture
nationally, from the Heritage Foundation, that debunks much of the
disinformation published in several of the offender advocacy reports listed below
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University
of San Francisco School of Law builds a JLWOP Brief database on line as
part of their project to end JLWOP. No mention of course of the victims
or the crimes on the website.
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"Death by Incarceration"
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USF's Publication
"Sentencing Children to Die in Prison"
and accompanying
article of the same name
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A powerful book explodes myths about adolescence and adult responsibility -
The Case Against Adolescence
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Children's
Exposure to Violence: A Comprehensive National Survey - this report made
huge national headlines in October 2009, and sheds much light on
causes
of youth violence as well as impact. Many victims of violent teens are
children. And it goes a long way to show how different America is from other
nations
on this difficult issue. NOVJL reiterates its call nationally to
bring victims of violent teens fully to the table in conversations about how
to prevent and address
this national crisis.
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The Book Teenage Rampage: The
Worldwide Youth Crime Explosion
http://www.mayhem.net/books/rampage.html
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Juvenile
Life Without Parole for Non-Homicide Cases: Florida compared to the Nation
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"From
Time Out To Hard Time - Young Children in the Adult Criminal Justice System"
- offender advocacy publication
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OJJP Releases
most recent statistics
on Juvenile Offenders transferred to adult criminal courts - only 8 in 1000
cases - rare as we said it should be!
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2009
Human Rights Watch Table of JLWOP Statistics for all States and Federal these numbers are
in dispute by other researchers
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Group EJI seeks Supreme Court cert
to take case of then 13 year old killer sentenced to life Dec 2008
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The
National Crime Victims Law Institute's report on sentencing models in all 50
states and the role
that victims have, if any, in any parole boards considering prisoner releases in
states that have it.
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The National Crime Victims Law Institute's brief on victims' rights in
retroactive sentencing reduction
legislative discussions- in this case in Illinois (but would be
applicable in many states in principle)
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MacArthur Foundation related juvenile
justice legal reports on the
Changing Borders of
Juvenile Justice and
Less Guilty by
Reason of Adolescence
(some offender advocacy)
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The United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child - summary - see article 37
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Human
Rights Watch and Amnesty International's joint report on JLWOP - "The Rest of
Their Lives" - offender advocacy
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Human Rights Watch JLWOP Page - offender advocacy
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Human Rights
Watch Report on Victims Rights, "Mixed Results" (inspired by an NOVJL
member)
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Human Rights Watch
Colorado Report "Thrown Away" - offender advocacy
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Equal Justice's
Report, "Cruel and Unusual: Sentencing 13 and 14 Year Old Children to Die in
Prison" -offender advocacy
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"Categorically Less Culpable" Report from the Illinois
Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Children -offender advocacy
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Michigan - ACLU Report against the JLWOP sentence offender advocacy
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Michigan State
University Criminal Justice Library - Juvenile Justice resources
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Sentencing Law and Policy Report on JLWOP offender advocacy
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Boston
College Professor's Paper on JLWOP after the Supreme Court's Roper V Simmons
Case on the
Juvenile Death Penalty
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"Criminology and Public Policy" papers on JLWOP
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National Sentencing
Commission - this report has a list of which states have determinate
sentencing (no parole)
and which ones have indeterminate sentencing (parole) - relevant to the JLWOP
discussion as what victims face
in these two kinds of state sentencing schemes is quite different with revisions
in the law
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Varying Victim Perspectives on
JLWOP from group advocating against JLWOP
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The NAACP's Legal Defense Project
report on JLWOP in Mississippi "No Chance to Make It Right",
(a title we vehemently object to! (even more than the other bad ones -
See below **for explanation.)
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"When I Die, They'll
Send Me Home" - a report on JLWOP in California from Human Rights Watch
-offender advocacy
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"Brain Overclaim Syndrome" -
a scientific debunking of the mis-use of brain research in "excusing" juvenile
criminal behavior
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The Brain On The
Stand" from the NY Times
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A research paper written on Juvenile
Life Without Parole by a Stanford University student preparing for Law School who opposes
the sentence and see
our commentary*****
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The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has published
Juvenile Transfer Laws: An Effective Deterrent to Delinquency?
We believe that the mandatory nature of the juvenile transfer into adult courts
is an area of possible reform to the JLWOP sentence that reformers should focus
on.
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A book from the MacArthur Foundation,
The Changing Borders of Juvenile Justice: Transfer of Adolescents to the
Criminal Court, Ed. Jeffrey Fagan, Jeffrey Zimring. (which addresses
the issue we feel will be key in JLWOP sentencing reform, the mandatory transfer
mechanisms of juvenile criminals to adult court)
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The
new book Rethinking Juvenile Justice touches on many issues
related to this debate
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The Juvenile Justice Newsletter "Adult Time
for Adult Crime"
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Princeton University's "The Future of Children" makes recommendations about how
to keep adolescents out of prison
An
executive summary and related policy brief, "Keeping
Adolescents Out of Prison,"
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The 2009 Criminal Justice Transition Coalition, which includes The
Sentencing Project and 20 other prominent national organizations, has just
released a collaborative report identifying critical needs for federal policy
reform.
Smart on Crime: Recommendations for the Next Administration and Congress
contains comprehensive policy recommendations at every stage of the justice
system for the new Administration and Congress.
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Juvenile Life Without
Parole Fact Sheet
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The ACLU
calls on Congress to end Life sentences for under age 18 offenders-
offender advocacy
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Michigan State
University's Juvenile Sentencing Issues Resource Page
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Youth and the US Justice System
A history curriculum that traces developments in the juvenile justice system
from the 1500’s to the policies and practices of today
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The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's National Youth
Gang Center has posted updated findings and analyses from OJJDP's National
Youth Gang Survey (NYGS) on its Web site. Available data include annual
numbers of gangs and gang members from 1996 through 2007, the change in the
number of gang-problem jurisdictions from 2002 to 2007, and gang member
demographics. You can download great data from the National Gang Center at
http://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/Survey-Analysis.
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Published by the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at The
University of Texas at Austin, the report "From Time Out to Hard Time: Young
Children
in the Adult Criminal Justice System" analyzes available data
to provide a comprehensive look at how the nation treats preadolescent
children who commit serious crimes and offers related recommendations.
http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/news/images/file/From%20Time%20Out%20to%20Hard%20Time-revised%20final.pdf.
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**It it absolutely thoughtless of the victims
of these
crimes for the NAACP to title this report "No Chance to Make It Right".
For those of us who have had family members murdered, bottom line is there is
NEVER a chance to "make it right" after a murder for anyone. Murdered loved ones
can not be brought back. No matter the age of the offender. The only "right"
possible for many victims is for the offender to serve their sentence without
asking the victims families to be further re-traumatized. But further, the
implication is that juveniles, or any offender, serving life sentences can't
possibly ever redeem themselves while behind bars, and that is not only NOT
true, but a horrible thing to say to all prisoners. A great deal of good can be
done by offenders from behind bars who are dedicated to doing so. No matter the
content of this report by an organization we have tremendous respect for, the
title of this report is further evidence of how absolutely out of touch with the
victims of these crimes most advocates for the juvenile lifers are around the
nation as a whole.
*****Regarding the research paper written by Mr. Roberge,
the Stanford student who interviewed Jennifer to get the perspective of someone
who favors the JLWOP sentence: we commend this young man's efforts in
researching and writing this paper. I enjoyed interviewing with him. No paper of
this length and attempting to cover this breadth will do justice to the nuanced
position I hold and that is required when thinking about the JLWOP sentence. In
general, And I believe that my own position is much more complex and less black
and white than I am portrayed - but it is helpful for me to see myself as
someone who interviews me sees me. If I have not gotten my message across
clearly than I have to work at my message. I don't have the faith in the
criminal justice system this portrays. I know it is riddled with error - serious
error - and is in need of dramatic reform - as are most human institutions, by
the way. I am not primarily an "opponent" of reform to the JLWOP sentence, and
in fact am a strong advocate for sweeping criminal justice system reforms. I am
primarily an advocate for victims rights of notification and empowerment to be
heard in all matters pertaining to their cases.
My message is that the sentence is only appropriate in the
most rare of circumstances - when a thorough and PROPER rigorous and honest and
just due process of law is given to a case and all agree that likely this
sociopath will never qualify for release, then the Human Rights of the victims
not to have to be re-injured to the degree that regular parole reviews DO damage
them should outweigh any right to review the offender has. And there is the
point. There ARE going to be offenders - no matter their age at the time of the
crime - that a rigorous and fair justice system will find unable to ever be
released. My most progressive and expert friends agree with me about that.
So when you know this is the case, you cannot ethically decide to hurt the
victims families over and over and over again for life when you KNOW the killer
will never earn release. That is why I am for the sentence - sometimes.
The magnitude of what victims families go through in the re-engagement that
comes with parole reviews. And solutions are not addressed in this paper - other
than to abolish the sentence which does not really solve the problem and is not
at all likely politically. I have tried to seriously address solutions on my
website - the transfer mechanism by which juvenile criminals are transferred to
adult courts - this should never be mandatory. Those kinds of reforms might
actually pass in some states.
But the paper does not address the JLWOP reform movement's refusal to date to
find and inform and reach out to the victims families of these crimes in true
restorative justice fashion is essential. I know it would take writing a book to
cover it all.
More specific comments on this paper to come.
Tangentially Related
Topical News Articles
National
Child Welfare League on the Death Penalty
OJJP Report on
Domestic Assaults by Juvenile Offenders
2008 Report on the Teen Murder
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