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VICTIMS FAMILIES OF JUVENILE KILLERS ARE REACHING OUT TO EACH OTHER Nationwide there are thousands of murder victims families for whom the killers were under age 18 at the time of the crimes. Where the killers are mature enough to be culpable, and where they show a repeated and real danger to society, they are sometimes, in the most serious cases, appropriately sentenced to Life Without Parole. Estimates are that approximately 2200 "juvenile lifers" are incarcerated in the United States. And we know that the United States has one of the harshest systems in the world on this issue (as well as others, like the death penalty). This "without parole" aspects of the sentence is particularly important for victims because many, or most, of these offenders would never be released anyway, even with parole as a possibility. And yet those victims families, depending on the states they live in, face a lifetime of regular parole reviews that re-traumatize them and cause them constant new agony. When it can be reasonably determined that the killer would never likely qualify for release because of the severity of the crime and the person's on-going dangerous mindset, then victims' families should not have to be subjected to regular parole reviews for the rest of their lives. Victims Rights are human rights too. And we are human rights advocates. And so - its painful to admit but this may be one of those rare situations where human rights of different parties are in direct contradiction to each other. You cannot correct the injustices against one group by hurting a different innocent group instead. When groups' rights are in direct conflict with each other, the innocent victims' rights must take precedence over those of the guilty killers. The issue is this: why are we sentencing the victims to a "Life Sentence" of regularly re-traumatizing and agonizing parole reviews for killers who have already been judged not capable of walking among us ever again? We can (and already have) created legal mechanisms such as clemency that allow for incorrect or overly harsh sentences to be changed. Parole is a nightmare bureaucracy whose main consequence is the huge burden to taxpayers, public safety, and the families and loved ones of the original victims of the crimes. All the while an international debate on whether or not "juvenile" offenders (only tried as adults in the most serious of cases where adult status has been determined to be appropriate) should ever be sentenced to Life Without Parole is already well underway in our country. We understand that the system is far from perfect and that human rights advocates are concerned that these young offenders have some sort of second chance. But that is what Executive Clemency was built into our Constitutions to create - a check and balance on errors in the legislative and judicial branches. The solution is already there in front of the advocates for juvenile offenders - educate and empower the clemency process where needed. Why bulldoze the entire field when all that is needed is to pull a few weeds? But the advocates for juvenile killers want more. They want to bulldoze the entire field. They want regular parole reviews and the huge bureaucracy needed to create that. Nothing could be worse for victims families and for all of us in the general public. Victims families of juveniles sentenced to life without parole, who have all "moved on" in the false security that these killers cannot ever get out, are being excluded from this discussion. Victims are, for the most part, not aware that the life sentences the killers in their case serve are NOT secure. Several of us who are victims of juvenile lifers are joining together nationwide to create a support and informational network to help us cope long term with the movement to free or lessen the sentences of the killers in our cases.
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