Fixing the time in youth crime: Long, harsh sentences not seen as way to rehabilitate

/in /by

By Elizabeth Stuart, Deseret News

For Utah’s youngest criminals, prison smells like potpourri.

Life is simple. Home is a 7-by-10 foot room with a bed, desk and bookshelves that look like they were probably poured out the back of the same cement truck. There’s a half-inch foam mat to make sleeping bearable and a stainless steel toilet in the corner. Through a slit-like window, children can watch the wind riffle through the sun-browned grass of a baseball field they built themselves. Here they dream about freedom and rue the decisions that sent them to the Decker Lake Youth Center to be locked up behind a stereotype-shattering, flimsy chain-link fence.

But life in the compound, a low-key brick building tucked behind a golf course at 2700 South in West Valley City, is mostly comfortable and laid back. Mornings and afternoons are spent learning about literature and algebra in classrooms not unlike those in nearby Granite School District. In the evenings the children gather in a homey rec room for group therapy with a motherly social worker, play basketball and — if there’s time — challenge one another to games of ping-pong. Here, there are no red-faced guards barking orders boot-camp style. Instead, gray-haired schoolteachers in cozy cardigans smile brightly at little vandals, robbers and knife-wielding gangsters and say things like, “These boys are my pride and joy.”

It is a far cry from the rat-infested juvenile detention centers that, for the past two decades, have been making U.S. headlines for jaw-dropping human rights violations like chaining youth to their beds 23 hours a day, beating them with bricks and forcing them to exercise without water. Homey, therapeutic Decker Lake Youth Center just might be a peek into the future of juvenile detention in the United States.

Read the rest of the article here.

Former JJPL Staff Member Kelly Orians Travels the World Promoting the End to JLWOP

/in /by

JJPL staff member, Kelly Orians is spending the next six months traveling around the world before starting law school and has started a blog, Trekking for Second Chances, to document her journey as well as raise money for ending juvenile life without parole.  Read her first blog entry:

December 22, 2011

One week from today Chris and I will be arriving in Hong Kong to start our 6 month journey to London! The process to get here has been a bit daunting as we have had to navigate international visa requirements, currency conversion, a half dozen vaccinations, language barriers as we reconnect with old friends and make new friends via Couchsurfing.org, determining what exactly we will need to pack for a 6 month long trip that spans three very different seasons, and, of course, convincing our moms we are prepared and will be safe…

This December we celebrated the one year anniversary of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana (JJPL)in partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) welcoming home their first clients after they were released from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Together these men served nearly a century in prison (pictured above as they walked out of the prison gates).

 

Read the entire blog entry here.

Juvenile lifer Anthony Jones may one day walk, but fate of others left unanswered

/in /by
By John Barnes, MLive.com
When Michigan “juvenile lifer” Anthony Jones was resentenced this week, he was given  the chance  to some day go free in the 1979 death of a store owner.
But because the unprecedented decision that lifted Jones’  life-without-parole sentence will not be challenged,  the question of whether other juvenile lifers deserve similar reconsideration — or not —  is left unanswered.
Avoiding that possibility had no bearing on the decision not to appeal, assistant Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Heather Bergmann said. That Jones,  50,  received a more severe sentence when he was 17 than the teen who pulled the trigger did, Bergmann said.
“We were unaware of all that history when we first took on the case,” she said. “We’re happy with the result. We believe it’s fair.”
Read the rest of the article here.

A chance of parole for juveniles sentenced to life

/in /by

By Lynn Graebner, California Health Report

Brian Warth was behind the wheel in a drive-by shooting in 1992. At 16 years old, he was tried as an adult and sentenced to 16 years to life for his role in a murder and attempted murder. The 15-year-old boy who actually pulled the trigger was tried as a juvenile and was paroled after about eight years.

After 16 years in prison, Warth was paroled in 2008. He made the most of his life on the inside, taking college and trade classes and spending 10 years as a prison pastor.

Today, as assistant pastor at Light & Life Christian Fellowship, a Methodist church in North Long Beach, his story has inspired kids and adults across the state. He’s also using his position to advocate for the California Fair Sentencing for Youth Act, Senate Bill 9, which would give prisoners who were sentenced as juveniles to life without parole a small chance of release.

Warth and his accomplice were lucky compared to many juveniles convicted of murder in California. As of last year, 295 inmates who were convicted as juveniles were serving life without parole, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Read the rest of the article here.

Re: No Remorse

/in /by

By Jeffrey Shook, The New Yorker

A letter in response to Rachel Aviv’s article (January 2, 2012)

Rachel Aviv’s article about Dakotah Eliason and his trial as an adult for  first-degree murder shows how adolescents often do not understand the  consequences of their actions and therefore fail to show the regret that  officials expect to see (“No Remorse,” January 2nd). By treating youths as  adults in the criminal-justice system, we are contesting the construct of  childhood itself.

Read more here.

Louisiana grapples with juvenile crime decision by Supreme Court

/in /by
By Paul Purpura, New Orleans Times-Picayune
Giovanni Brown was 16 when he and another teen forced their way into a home in an upscale Harvey subdivision in 1999, armed with pistols and intent on mayhem. After holding four people against their will for hours, ransacking the home and trying in vain to force the homeowner to withdraw cash from an ATM, the teenagers stole two cars loaded with the family’s property.
Brown was prosecuted as an adult and convicted of aggravated kidnapping and four counts of armed robbery. He was sentenced in 2000 to life in prison with no chance of probation, parole or suspended sentence for the kidnapping, and another 40 years for robbery. Under Louisiana law, Brown would never leave prison, a reality his public defender Marquita Naquin argued during the trial.
“What can a 16-year-old do in the first 16 years of his life that demands that we throw him away?” Naquin asked the jury just before it unanimously rejected her plea.
Her argument proved prophetic.
Read the rest of the article here.

Juvenile offenders and lawmakers get another chance

/in /by

By Robert Greene, Opinion LA Blog, Los Angeles Times

We’ve said it before — more than a dozen times. A child, even a bad one, should not be sent to prison for life without any chance at parole. It’s a mark of societal fear and a lust for revenge. Some younger criminals may indeed be so incorrigible that they should never go free, but after he or she has been behind bars for a quarter of a century, a judge, and a parole board, should be able to consider release.

On Tuesday, the state Assembly is reconsidering SB 9, a bill to put California among the ranks of civilized societies by ending juvenile life without parole sentences. Finally, Assembly, put this matter to rest, pass the bill and send it to the governor.

Or, as we have said previously…

 

Read the entire opinion piece here.

 

 

Change Juvenile No-Parole Law

/in /by

By Gail Garinger, The Lowell Sun

Fair sentencing for juveniles requires holding youth accountable for their
actions and providing them with resources for rehabilitation, while recognizing
the paramount importance of ensuring public safety.

Our pledge to children in the commonwealth should be that we will start early
and never give up — particularly for children who have grown up in poverty and
with difficulties imposed on them by their parents and communities. Abuse and
neglect in the home and violence in the community create toxic stress in the
developing brains of children. We should not be surprised when these same
children find their way to trouble, and our response should include compassion
and rehabilitative services in addition to accountability.

Youths charged with murder are automatically tried as adults and, if
convicted of first-degree murder, receive a mandatory sentence of life without
parole. Life without the possibility of parole is the harshest punishment
available in Massachusetts, and imposing it on children ages 14, 15, and 16 is
an exceptionally severe sanction. A child’s age, past conduct, level of
participation in the crime, personal background and potential for rehabilitation
are irrelevant. These youths will grow up and grow old in prison, and they will
die while still incarcerated.

The law subjecting adolescents as young as 14 to life sentences without the
possibility of parole was enacted in reaction to a number of circumstances,
including insufficient punishment in the 1980s.
Read more here.

New Year's Resolution on Punishing Kids

/in /by

 

By James Alan Fox, The Boston Globe

The turn of the calendar always brings news about how crime levels have trended over the previous year.  And like many cities around the country, Boston witnessed fewer crimes in 2011 than 2010, including a double-digit drop in homicide.

With crime rates at a 50-year low, this is a good time to re-examine our criminal justice policies, especially those measures implemented in a knee-jerk fashion when crime rates and higher levels of fear were peaking. We should begin in the areas that are a significant drain on the budget, such as our over-reliance on lengthy prison terms for juvenile murderers who, after decades of incarceration, no longer pose a danger to society. And this is hardly a left-wing, soft-on-crime idea, as even conservatives like Newt Gingrich have argued that we can’t afford to continue pouring vast sums of tax dollars into prison systems.

Many people are surprised to learn that Massachusetts is one of the toughest places in the world in punishing juvenile murderers. Defendants as young as 14, who are charged with murder are automatically tried as adults. If convicted, they are automatically sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. No other state has this harsh and rigid combination, and several states, including ultra-conservative Texas, have recently abolished life without parole sentences for juveniles.

Read the entire article here.

Bay State must relax youth punishments

/in /by

By Jody Kent Lavy.  Letter to the Editor, The Boston Globe

I WAS pleased to read the Globe’s story highlighting some of the injustices in the practice of sentencing children to life in prison without the possibility of release in Massachusetts (“For teens guilty of murder, penalties can vary widely; Review finds no pattern in young killers’ terms since Mass. law change,’’ Page A1, Dec. 27).

Massachusetts has one of the strictest sentencing schemes for juveniles in the country: children as young as 14 charged with murder must be transferred to adult court and receive a mandatory life without parole sentence, if convicted. There is no opportunity to consider the influence of older co-defendants, history of abuse or neglect, or any other mitigating factors.

 

Read the entire article here.