Welcome to the
National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Lifers

                      CONTACT US via email                        or                    Call us at 847-446-7073 or 217-415-1416

See tabs at the top of this page for important related links to the discussion about victims
and the Juvenile Life sentence debate nationally

WHY WE ARE HERE

Over 2,300 killers and their accomplices in the USA have been sentenced to Life Without the Possibility of Parole for committing some of the most horrific murders imaginable, while still under the age of 18. The acronym used for that sentence is JLWOP - Juvenile Life Without Parole.

Of course there is discussion about the appropriateness of the Life Without Parole sentence for any offender, and there should be - it is an extremely serious punishment. But it is especially controversial for younger offenders.

In the national debate generated by advocates for these younger killers, we are here to assert our right to be included in the discussion - something that generally is not happening.

In the several states where there are proposals to abolish JLWOP, victims families of those crimes have not been found and informed and supported to be part of the discussions.

In any such significant public policy discussion no key stakeholders should be kept away from the table.

Yet murder victims families of the younger killers in the United States, confident that "Life Without Parole" as a sentence meant they could walk away and, as best they could, "move on" in their lives, have not been told of proposed retroactive changes to this sentence for the person responsible for killing their loved ones.

It is important to remember in these discussions that, for the most part, these are not just "routine" killings - all of these cases had extremely serious degrees of what the law calls "aggravation" in order to achieve a sentence that serious, and in order to be legally tried as adults.

But as with many other areas of the criminal justice system, the system is not perfect, and this prison sentence is facing proposals for reform, as is the broad sentencing structure across the United States. Primarily the concern for the JLWOP sentence is the age of the offenders and the belief that they are less culpable because of that.

While it is obvious that the younger a person is, the less they are capable of consistently good decision-making, the problem runs along a spectrum and cannot be judged along distinct lines. And knowing that it is wrong to kill, and being able to keep oneself from doing just that, comes pretty early in life for most young people. Ultimately it is a very complex problem, and does require a significant public policy discussion.

But this public policy discussion cannot be had without all the key stakeholders at the table and the victims of these crimes and their families are not just stakeholders, they are the ENTIRE issue.

There would not be the crime, the sentence, or the debate unless there was first innocent victims, targeted for death by killers. There cannot now be a discussion as to the fate of those killers, sentenced through Due Process to Life Without Parole without the most important people at the table - the Victims' Families.

The national effort is now well underway by advocates for juvenile offenders to eliminate, or certainly to moderate, the juvenile life without parole sentence for the convicted murderers under the age of 18 at the time of their offenses.

Legislation has been proposed in several states, such as Illinois, California, Michigan, Nevada, and others, that would change the Life Without Parole sentences earned by the over 2,300 killers sentenced to natural life in the United States who were under 18 at the time of their horrific crimes.

While we can understand the well-meaning motives of those concerned over such a permanent sentence for those so young when they killed, and with whom many might even sympathize; and we welcome the dialog that has occurred in some states between sentencing reform advocates and victims’ rights advocates; we are deeply concerned that in some states murder victims family members are the innocents left behind in pain and are the ones truly serving a "life sentence".

Unbelievably, the victims families of these JLWOP cases have, for the most part, been left out of the advocacy and public policy discussion by those trying to change the JLWOP sentence.  They have been left out, more the most part, because they do not even know that the efforts to change the system are even taking place.

This is not acceptable - to leave the victims of these crimes out of the conversation about what to do with their loved ones' killers and those who harmed them - and will not lead to the broad social chance the advocates for the juvenile lifers would hope for, in any case. Unless principles of victims rights and human rights and restorative justice are applied to the victims families, the social discourse on this sentence for younger killers will degenerate, as it already has in several states, to polarized adversarial battling, resulting in no reforms accomplished and no victims being supported.

Even though there has been a well-funded and staffed, orchestrated multi-organizational movement calling for an end to the Juvenile LWOP sentence operating nationally for years, only one state has passed any legislation reforming Juvenile Life Without Parole sentences - Colorado.

And Colorado had to pass its law in a painfully adversarial battle with the victims families (that knew about the legislative effort to lessen the sentences of their loved ones' killers). This opposition, we know, saddened and frustrated the conscientious advocates for the juvenile offenders. They have written to us and stated how much they wish that there could have been a respectful and responsible dialogue between them. Instead it was agonizing for all sides.

And in the end, they settled gladly for a piece of legislation that changed the JLWOP sentences only prospectively - from here on - not retroactively applied to the 45  JLWOPers in the Colorado prison system currently.

And the prospective legislative change still requires the juvenile killers to serve a minimum of 40 years before they even get their first parole review.

The legislation to end or moderate JLWOP in just a handful of other states is languishing or has been outright defeated, largely, we guess because there is just not the significant public support needed to make a change that would let some of the most heinous killers, no matter their age at the time of the offense, out of prison.

The fact is that this nation really does, for the most part, want guilty murderers who coldly calculate their violent choices to spend much, if not all, of their lives in prison,  regardless of their age. And while this is the dominant cultural value, the only hope that advocates for offenders have is to launch long term educational campaigns, open dialogue modeled on Restorative Justice principles  where the focus is entirely on healing the victims, and most significantly, give at least a good part of their efforts over to PREVENTION.

But if they really want to pass legislation to end or moderate this sentence, they have to start by doing the careful work of investing in the victims first - building relationships with them, empowering their voices, supporting their needs. Offender-centered approaches do not work in American criminal justice reform, by and large. They are based on an appeal for sympathy for killers that most people do not feel.

Compassion is an incredibly important and positive human trait, and so are the values we place as people on responsibility and accountability. Ultimately, like all other evaluations in the nation's incredibly large and complicated criminal justice system, we all have to walk a fine line, a balanced and careful path, one that we evaluate thoughtfully and measure conscientiously. JLWOP is just one part of that conversation.

But one that requires all voices to be heard.

Why haven't the victims families of the JLWOP killers been found and brought to this table in this conversation? Why aren't there foundations and grants and staffs and budgets and support networks and conferences and offices and glossy reports for them?

Because the concern for the killers has come first with those who have advocated for a change in their sentences.

And that is wrong.

We are left to speak for ourselves.

Murder victims families of the juvenile life killers have begun to take the first steps to find each other and to insist that our voices be heard in this national dialogue.

We understand and accept that those who would advocate for the Human Rights of the younger killers, heinous as their crimes are, do so from noble motivations. But we cannot understand why those leading the national call to end the JLWOP sentence for those they admitted are guilty murderers have begun this movement with the concern for the offenders first.

As is too often the case in the national victims rights community, it falls to the victims to have to point out the obvious and step up to make the call to do the right thing.

And this is a word of advice to the advocates for the JLWOP offenders - creating a victim-supportive strategy is the only thing politically, realistically, that will work to accomplish the reforms they say they want. Offenders aren't the only ones with rights.

Victims Rights are also Human Rights too.

We have been troubled however by the apparent difficulty just a few of these advocates for the juvenile lifers have had practicing what they preach. While some of them advocate restorative justice principles be applied to some of the worst killers in the nation, they are not being consistently practiced by those in the movement for these killers, simply because they are being excluded from any notice of their efforts to free these killers.

The effort to end the JLWOP sentence is relatively young in the United States.  It achieved most of its cohesion after the United States Supreme Court ruled in Simmons v Roper against the Juvenile Death Penalty.

Only a few of us who are victims' family members of these killers know about this effort. We find most of those who want to end JLWOP to be good and caring people. We have found just a few to be arrogantly disinterested in the effect that their campaigns for these killers have had on their victims.

The advocates for the JLWOP killers nationally have FUNDING, staff, offices, publications, conferences, and infrastructural support. The victims of these killers have NOT been allotted one dime of this, not one ounce of services, outreach, etc, yet. Victims of these killers should be given just as much, in the way of resources, as should their killers, if not much more, if the ideals these advocates espouse hope to see realization.

Reading some of their reports about the juvenile lifers (and several states have done such reports - California, Illinois, Michigan, etc), it is clear that they have used a poorly thought out "ohh, those poor children" approach that uses pictures of the killers as youngsters, sometimes far before they committed the crimes that earned them the life sentences, sad stories about how hard their lives are in prison, and nothing short really of a sympathy for the offender propaganda approach. No pictures in these reports, that we have seen, of any of the victims, often really the only children in the crime's scenario. No discussion about the actual crimes themselves and their impact on families and communities. And no discussion that we can detect about how to prevent these horrible crimes in the first place.

Historically the advocates against JLWOP might want to look to some of their colleagues in the anti-death penalty movement to find out politically how effective it had been in decades past to focus on trying to create public sympathy for the killers as the reason to end the practice of executing killers. What has begun to work in that movement has been the definitive change in the last ten years to focus on the victims families and the flaws in the system.  But that is a different conversation.

What would have worked much better for this movement against JLWOP would have been from the start to do something focused on the horrors of the crimes, the impact on victims and the need to understand at once the breadth of the tragedy that this all is, and a call for prevention in every way possible. What would have worked much better would be to do victim outreach to every single family affected, instead of just to the prisoners, and find out what went wrong - what the families needed, how they were doing, what their concerns were, asked them to talk about what could have kept this from happening in the first place. What will work better will be for the advocates against JLWOP to begin a new strategy that focuses on flaws in the system, creating dialogue with those most affected and the rest of the public that is interested in safety, accountability, and ending violence. It is not too late - we call on all advocates nationally who oppose JLWOP to start that process now and we stand here willing to participate - painful as it is to us (and that point cannot be understated).

HELP US FIND THE VICTIMS FAMILIES OF THE 2300+ "Juvenile Lifers" in the United States

The National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Lifers was created to help find, notify, and empower the voices of murder victim family members of cases when the killer or killers were under 18 at the time of the murder, and where the killers were sentenced to natural life, without the possibility of parole, or life. Please contact us if you are one of those families and are interested in learning about the efforts nationally or in your state to end the JLWOP sentence.

We will be working to make sure that our voices are heard in any discussions about the sentences in prison that those who killed our loved ones are serving. We believe that those who advocate for the killers have a primary and fundamental obligation to do everything they can to find, fully inform, and offer support networks and empowerment to each and every victims family that is potentially affected by their advocacy work to change the sentences for those killers.

We offer ourselves to help.

In the spring of 2008, ten families of victims of juvenile life killers in three states, Illinois, California, and Michigan, started this network with the intention of finding as many victims families of juvenile killers sentenced to life without parole, to tell them of this national effort to possibly free their loved ones' killers, and to offer them support,  others like us, and help empower our role in the national dialogue about the questions surrounding the JLWOP sentence.

We are saddened that this was not done on its own first by the JLWOP advocacy movement for the killers. Given the size of the foundations, law firms, and advocacy groups that they have working for the killer's interests, we are very sad indeed at their priorities. But life is a learning process, and we hope that those who care about the killers will finally begin to do the right thing by their victims first, avoiding the "offender-centered" approach, and practicing true principles of Restorative Justice.

WHAT IS THE ANSWER to this JLWOP "problem"?

Conversation can't begin until most people even agree there is a problem, and we do not believe there is consensus about this. Education is the first step, and a factual and data-driven evaluation of the system to see exactly what problems might actually exist.

Important to note in this discussion about a complex social problem like the numbers of young people who have been killing at rates far beyond that of any other nation in the world. it cannot be a one-size fits all solution, as some advocates for the juvenile lifers would have us believe - to simply eliminate the sentence.

Solutions to sophisticated problems are never simple.

At the heart of this public policy discussion is a horrible truth - there are brutally murdered people, leaving behind devastated families, friends, and communities, and there are some of the most brutal and least sympathetic murderers in our nation behind bars because of it. The cost emotionally, financially, and in every other way on ALL of us, most especially the loved ones left behind, is staggering, incredibly painful, and very complex.

And a much more important question has to be asked, if the reason that juveniles are killing so many, so brutally, is their not yet fully formed brains, why aren't young people of their same ages in other countries and cultures killing at the same rates?

And they are not.

Eliminating the prison sentence is not the first step in this much needed national dialogue. And no voice in this process will stand more for the idea that these crimes should never have been allowed to happen in the first place than the victims families.

We ask that the advocates against JLWOP take on this bigger picture question.

Then the next step has to be to address the harm that has been caused. That would require protecting the public by removing the offender and looking to the needs of the victims.

Only in that order of priority, we believe, can any other systemic reforms have significant meaning.

The legal and constitutional issues around the JLWOP sentence have simply not been addressed adequately, and must be studied by top legal minds and professionals. Financial cost-benefit analyses must be done. Best practices in psychology and social services must be implemented across the board. Resources must be allocated differently than they have up to now.

SOLUTIONS

States vary widely in sentencing models. Many states have determinate sentencing and how legislation would impact victims rights in those states will differ significantly than in those states already with parole structures already in place and indeterminate sentencing.

Additionally, changes that are prospective in law, rather than retroactive, will be much less of an issue for victims.

We believe the answers to questions being raised by JLWOP reformers will generally fall along these lines:

Sadly, sometimes just following Human Rights standards cannot be the only guide. Actually, those rights can sometimes, as described here, be in direct conflict with each other.

And when that is the case, innocent victims' rights over that of guilty offenders should take precedence.

In other words, only in states with indeterminate sentencing, if we can reasonably determine that an offender, even if younger, would never achieve the requirements for parole and early release, we believe it is morally wrong and a horrific violation of human rights of victims families to be forced through the agonizing process of regular parole hearings for the rest of their lives. Life without parole simply has to be an option in those kinds of cases.

These discussions will not be easy. But ALL affected victims that so choose to engage MUST be included.

Follow this link to the IllinoisVictims.org pages on the JLWOP sentence controversy.

Click here to see or add to the memorial pages for victims of JLWOP killers.

Click here to see some of the outrageously callous attention paid to these killers without note of the cost to the victims.

RELEVANT INFORMATION BY STATES