“In the United States, over 200,000 children every year are tried as adults, and on any given day an estimated 6,000 are incarcerated in an adult facility while they are still juveniles.”

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder charged the task force with recommending ways our nation can prevent, reduce, and treat children’s exposure to violence.

View the full report at http://www.justice.gov/defendingchildhood/cev-rpt-full.pdf

The Miller decision followed earlier rulings that abolished for juveniles the death penalty for all crimes and life without parole for crimes other than homicide. Together, these rulings have forced states to think very differently about how to hold juveniles accountable for crime. In recent times, states increasingly pushed juveniles into the adult criminal justice system and subjected them to overly harsh punishment. There are an estimated 2,100 people serving mandatory life sentences received when they were juveniles, in 29 states that imposed the penalty.

But Miller would change all that. States must henceforth make “individualized sentencing decisions,” in Justice Elena Kagan’s words, rather than imposing mandatory life without parole. They must take into account a youth’s age, maturity, family circumstances and history, potential for rehabilitation and other factors. And states must engage in meaningful review of juveniles in prison so they have the opportunity to re-enter their communities if they are rehabilitated.

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This year, the U.S. Supreme Court made clear that children should not receive extreme sentences.The Miller v. Alabama decision in June was the latest case in which the court noted that children are different from adults and that this should be considered in sentencing.

The Pennsylvania Legislature is now considering this issue — an amendment to Senate Bill 850, which could provide an alternative sentencing option for juveniles convicted of homicide and sentenced to life without parole.This bill, however, fails to provide the type of reform that we need, so I urge our legislators not to approve it.

With this legislation, Pennsylvania would eliminate automatic life-without-parole sentences for children — as required by the Supreme Court decision — but sentencing authorities would still have the discretion to impose life-without-parole sentences if they determine it is appropriate.

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania lawmakers on Tuesday responded to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that bans automatic life-without-parole sentences for juveniles by voting for a bill with prison terms tied to the age of the teen murderers.

The House voted 174-20 for the measure that would give defendants under age 15 at least 20 years for second-degree murder and 25 years for first-degree. Those ages 15 to 17 would see minimum sentences drop to 25 and 35 years, respectively.

The vote sent the measure over to the state Senate, where, in the waning days of the current two-year legislative session, the Republican majority leadership said it would likely pass. GOP Gov. Tom Corbett’s office said he supports it.

Opponents said the bill needed more work, while supporters said the revised sentencing scheme was a fair response to the high court’s ruling.

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“It’s an awful thing, solitary,” John McCain wrote of his time as a prisoner of war. “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.”

The United States is a leading practitioner of this “awful thing,” with thousands of prisoners confined to cells, cut off from nearly all human contact, for weeks, months, even years.

The advent in recent decades of the supermax facility, oxymoronically designed for mass solitary confinement, has resulted in about 25,000 prisoners held in such conditions. Tens of thousands more are kept in restrictive segregation units at regular facilities.

The dehumanizing impact of this treatment has long been known. In 1831, after touring a New York prison that practiced an early experiment in isolation, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “This absolute solitude, if nothing interrupts it, is beyond the strength of man. . . . It does not reform, it kills.”

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SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday announced signing a bill that could one day bring the release of some criminals who were sentenced as juveniles to life in prison.

There are 309 inmates serving life-without-parole sentences in California for murders committed when they were younger than 18.

Brown signed SB9, by Democratic Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco. It would let the inmates ask judges to reconsider their sentences after they serve at least 15 years in prison.

Judges could then reduce the no-parole sentence to 25 years-to-life if the inmate shows remorse and is taking steps toward rehabilitation.

Yee said his bill recognizes that young people’s brains and impulse control grow as they age. His bill was opposed by the state’s major law enforcement and victims’ organizations.

“I am proud that today California said we believe all kids, even those we had given up on in the past, are deserving of a second chance,” Yee said in a statement.

California is one of 39 states that allow judges to sentence minors to die in prison. More than 2,570 people convicted as juveniles are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole in the U.S., according to the Youth Justice Coalition, an Inglewood-based group concerned with the treatment of juvenile offenders.

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But the high court stopped short of banning life-without-parole sentences, leaving it up to states to determine whether lifetime sentences remain an option.

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There are approximately 300 people imprisoned in California who will be directly impacted by this law.  California is one of just five states that incarcerate two-thirds of the people serving life-without-parole sentence for crimes committed as youth.  The United States alone sentences children to death in prison.

While this is a modest reform that still requires children to serve at least 25 years in prison, it represents a significant shift away from harsh sentencing policies that ignore the unique characteristics of children.  Science has proven what every parent knows– that young people are still developing both physically and
emotionally and their brains, not just their bodies, are not yet fully mature. Because of these differences, youth have greater potential to become rehabilitated. The new law allows people who received life without parole
sentences as youth to apply for resentencing hearings on three occasions five years apart. This reform creates meaningful periodic reviews consistent with international human rights law that will assess at multiple stages in people’s sentences if they have changed enough to be reintegrated into society.

This law is also in keeping with a continued trend from the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledging that children must be treated differently from adults in the context of sentencing. In 2005, the Supreme Court prohibited
the death penalty for children, acknowledging that youthfulness is an important factor in determining whether a punishment is cruel and unusual. In 2010, the Supreme Court struck down the practice of sentencing children to life in prison without parole for non-homicide crimes. Then in June of this year, the Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama that mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole for children are unconstitutional.

Other states should follow the lead of California and the Supreme Court in abolishing extreme sentencing policies that disregard the fundamental differences between youth and adults.  Many such policies were originally
established during the 1990s, a time of heightened fear resulting from the “superpredator theory,” which predicted a juvenile crime wave.  It never materialized.

Nationwide, approximately 2,500 people are serving death-in-prison terms for crimes committed when they were children. In California, as throughout the country, the people condemned to these sentences are disproportionately from low-income families and minority racial backgrounds. Many were first-time offenders and often influenced by an adult co-defendant, who frequently received a lesser sentence.

As California enters this new era, we express sincere gratitude to California Senator Leland Yee, a child psychologist, who introduced the bill and championed it tirelessly for three years.

We are heartened by the progress that has been made, and know there is more work to be done to replace misguided policies that do not consider the fundamental differences between youth and adults, with ones that
ensure young people are held accountable in fair, age-appropriate ways that reflect their potential to change.

By all accounts, Quantel developed a close relationship with his new step-siblings, including Michael, who was three years older. On November 13, 1999, however, Quantel and Michael got into an argument. Michael hit Quantel with a blow dart, Quantel responded with a toy bow and arrow and a fight ensued. Michael was stabbed and later died. Quantel was charged with first-degree murder, tried and convicted as an adult. His sentence was mandatory: under Missouri law anyone convicted of first-degree murder must be sentenced to death or life in prison without the possibility of parole. Over the objections of his stepmother and Michael’s biological mother, Tammy, fourteen-year-old Quantel was sentenced to die in prison.

On June 25, 2012, the Supreme Court decided the companion cases of Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs, holding that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles like Quantel violate the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution. The joint ruling in Miller and Jackson thus became the third Supreme Court decision in seven years to conclude that three fundamental features of youth — lack of maturity, vulnerability to negative influences and capacity for change — make children “constitutionally different” from adults and “less deserving of the most severe punishments.”

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