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CFSY Director and National Coordinator Jody Kent Lavy discusses how Attorney General Eric Holder’s “Smart on Crime” initiative could impact young people in this story with by The Chicago Bureau.

In a bid to decongest the nation’s overpopulated prisons, the Obama administration has proposed leniency for certain drug cases, a move with uncertain consequences for juvenile inmates.

The president’s new Smart on Crime initiative has received national attention since Attorney General Eric H. Holder announced the policy at the American Bar Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco on Monday.

Attorney General Eric Holder / Creative Commons

The initiative – highlighted by an easing of mandatory minimum sentencing laws for low-level drug cases – could help reduce the booming prison population. But it’s unclear what impact that will have on the country’s juvenile incarceration rate, the highest of any industrialized nation.

“This is all great language, but in terms of what reforms (Holder’s) proposing and how they will reduce juvenile incarceration – it’s an open question,” said Antonio Ginatta, Human Rights Watch advocacy director of the U.S. Program . “The real action needs to occur in state legislatures and in Congress.”

“Long story short, he identifies the right issues, but I don’t know if he has all the tools necessary to make the changes.”

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The death of Trayvon Martin and the subsequent acquittal of shooter George Zimmerman have generated renewed conversations about the role of race in the criminal justice system.

As the national organization working to end sentences of life without parole for children, the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth has a responsibility to speak honestly about the problems within the criminal justice and juvenile justice systems. The very practice of sentencing children to die in prison was born during a period of heightened fear and racism exacerbated by the since disproven superpredator theory, which projected a rising tide of young people who would engage in violent criminal activity without regard for human life or consequences.   

On average across the country, black youth are serving life without parole at a per capita rate that is 10 times that of white youth, according to Human Rights Watch. In several states, black youth are at least 18 times more likely to be serving a sentence of life without parole than white youth.

A sentence of life-without-parole is a sentence to die in prison. Imposing this irrevocable sentence on a child is a declaration that he or she is a throwaway person.   In addition, we know that homicide is the leading cause of death among young black men, ages 15-34 according to the Centers for Disease Control, yet gun control has yet to be addressed in a meaningful way. These statistics certainly raise the question of how our society assigns value to the lives of black and brown children compared to those of whites. 

Many have compared Trayvon’s death to that of Emmitt Till, who was in 1955 beaten to death, shot in the head and thrown into a river in Money, Mississippi after he was accused of whistling at a white woman. Although two white men were positively identified as the assailants during a trial, an all-white jury found the men not guilty. Despite this, Till’s death had a major impact on the movement for racial equality after the world saw images of his boated, scarred body in his casket.

Whether or not we agree with this comparison, we must use this opportunity to ensure that important conversations about racial disparities throughout the juvenile and criminal justice systems– and specifically as they relate to life without parole for children – can take place. We don’t claim to have the answers, but we at the CFSY commit to pushing for data, strategies and solutions.

Texas Governor Rick Perry has signed into law Senate Bill 2, which removes life without the possibility of parole as a sentencing option for children. Although the new law is a step forward, it does not go far enough in acknowledging the fundamental difference between children and adults and children’s unique capacity for change and rehabilitation.

The law is the state’s effort to comply with last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. Alabama, which found that mandatory sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole are unconstitutional when imposed upon a person who was younger than 18 at the time a crime was committed. Texas eliminated the sentences in 2005 for children who were 16 or younger at the time of a crime, but 17-year-olds were not impacted by the change because 17 is the age of adult jurisdiction in Texas. Under the new law, no one younger than 18 can be sentenced to die in prison.

Under SB2, children convicted of serious crimes in Texas will become eligible for parole after serving a minimum of 40 years. In this way, the new law exchanges one mandatory sentence for another because it does not allow for the individualized sentencing hearings outlined in Miller. According to Miller, key mitigating factors should be considered at sentencing, such as the child’s age, role in the crime, history of abuse and neglect and coercion by an adult co-defendant.

Texas Senator Jose Rodriguez, a former prosecutor for El Paso County, voted against the legislation, which was passed during the second special session of the summer after it failed during the first. Rodriguez said judges and juries should have more flexibility to consider individual circumstances and that children should not be treated the same as adults.

“Juveniles offenders, because of their brain development and other factors are different from other offenders,” he said. The senator also expressed concerns about documented racial disparities that show that blacks and Hispanics receive harsher penalties than whites for the same crimes.

Lawyers for children in Texas have indicated that they plan to challenge the new law.

In this commentary in the Huffington Post, Xavier McElrath Bey writes about being sentenced to prison as a young teen and his path to change. He exemplifies what research has demonstrated: young people are uniquely capable of change and rehabilitation. The CFSY supports accountability measures that hold young people accountable for their crimes while focusing on rehabilitation and reintegration into society.

By Xavier McElrath-Bey

I had already spent time in the juvenile detention center on seven different occasions. Yet at such a young age, I didn’t fully understand the ramifications of what had occurred; nor did I understand how so many lives — including my own — would be devastated because of my actions. I did not think the victim would die and I was not the actual killer, so I never imagined that I would face a long prison term. Only when I was transferred to adult court and spoke to my defense lawyer did I understand that I would likely spend decades in prison. I eventually plead guilty in order to avoid the 40-year sentence the state sought.

Because I was so focused on the daily routine of survival in an aggressive environment, I didn’t have many opportunities to reflect upon my life or even imagine a better future. It wasn’t until I was 18 and in solitary confinement at Pontiac Correctional Center in Illinois that I realized how destructive and wrong I had been. I thought about all the people I had hurt; I thought about his family and the pain I had caused them and most of all I wished I had the power to go back in time and save his life. Overwhelmed with remorse and regret, and with my growing sense of disillusionment with the gang life in which I was involved, I began to think about the root causes of my childhood decisions.

I realize that I — like so many misled youth — had been perfectly socialized into being a gang member. My childhood traumas of living in poverty, having a mother diagnosed with mental illness, living in fear of an abusive step-father, and being placed in and out of foster care made me ripe for the occasions of impulsive and destructive behavior — especially gang involvement which gave me the sense of having a new family.

This week we mark the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. Alabama that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for youth are unconstitutional due to the categorical differences between children and adults. Youth must be held accountable when they cause harm to others, and especially when a life is taken.

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