CFSY Intern

Today, the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth issues the first-ever guidelines for defending children facing our country’s most extreme sentence. “Trial Defense Guidelines: Representing a Child Client Facing a Possible Life Sentence” (“Guidelines”) seeks to articulate the standard established by Miller v. Alabama for legal representation of children facing life sentences. The first juvenile court was created […]

Ten years ago, our country took an important step to improve our justice system when the United States Supreme Court abolished the death penalty for juveniles. It is long past time we extended the logic of that ruling and abolished life without parole sentences for juveniles as well. In its landmark 2005 decision, Roper vs. […]

By Shafaq Hasan October 23, 2014 According to the Equal Justice Initiative, nearly 10,000 children across the country have been sentenced as adults and are serving time in adult prisons. Pennsylvania, which has the highest number of incarcerated children serving life sentences and no minimum age to try a child as an adult, is now […]

By Rev. Ruben Austria October 21, 2014 What would happen if community stakeholders in U.S. urban neighborhoods plagued by the highest rates of youth crime and incarceration were given the opportunity to intervene early— and often— on behalf of young people caught up in the juvenile justice system? One answer to that question has now […]

By Carrie Johnson September 12, 2014 Twenty years ago this week, in 1994, then-President Bill Clinton signed a crime bill. It was, in effect, a long-term experiment in various ways to fight crime. The measure paid to put more cops on the beat, trained police and lawyers to investigate domestic violence, imposed tougher prison sentences […]