News

http://thedailyvoice.com/voice/2009/11/america-must-join-the-civilize-002406.php

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

In 2005 the U.S. Supreme Court took a huge step toward joining nearly all nations on the globe when it banned teen executions. But it was only a step. The U.S. still locks up more juveniles for life without the possibility of parole than all nations combined. The High Court will rule on two Florida cases where juvenile offenders got no-parole life sentences. In those cases as well as tens of others, the juvenile offenders received life without parole sentences for crimes that did not involve murder. The offenders ranged in age from 13 to 16 years old. There are about 100 juvenile offenders incarcerated for life in eight states with no chance for parole. Nineteen states in all still have no-parole sentences for juveniles on their books.

The 100 offenders who are serving the draconian no-parole sentences though are only the tip of a more terrifying iceberg. A year ago Human Rights Watch found that more than 2,000 juvenile offenders are serving life without possibility of parole sentences. A significant number of the juveniles sentenced to no-parole sentences did not actually commit murder but were participants in a robbery or were at the scene of the crime when the death occurred. The majority of the teens slapped with the sentence had no prior convictions, and a substantial number were age 15 or under.

The stock argument against a blanket ban on no-parole sentences is that violence is violence no matter the age of the perpetrator, and that punishment must be severe to deter crime. Prosecutors and courts in the states that convict and impose no-parole life sentences on juvenile offenders have vigorously rejected challenges that teen no-parole sentences are a violation of the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Hollywood movie sensationalism and media-driven myths about rampaging youth not to mention the very real horror stories of gang violence and young persons who do commit horrendous crimes also reinforce the popular notion that juveniles are violent predators. This has done much to damp down public sentiment that juvenile offenders can be helped with treatment and rehabilitation and deserve a second chance rather than a prison cell for life.

This is not to minimize the pain, suffering and trauma, juvenile offenders cause to their victims and their loved ones with their crimes. However, a society that slaps the irrevocable punishment of life without parole on juvenile offenders sends the terrible message that it has thrown in the towel on turning the lives of young offenders around. Supreme Court Justice Arthur Kennedy hinted at just that in his majority opinion that scrapped teen executions. Kennedy noted that, “the punishment of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is itself a severe sanction, in particular for a young person.”

Kennedy acknowledged, as have legions of child violence experts, that juveniles don’t have the same maturity, judgment, or emotional development as adults. Child experts agree that children are not natural-born predators and that if given proper treatment, counseling, skills training and education, most juvenile offenders can be turned into productive adults.

In a report on juveniles and the death penalty, Amnesty International found that a number of child offenders sentenced to death suffered severe physical or sexual abuse. Many others were alcohol or drug impaired, or suffered from acute mental illness or brain damage. Nearly all were below average intelligence. Some of the juvenile offenders were goaded, intimidated, or threatened with violence by adults who committed their violent crimes and forced them to be their accomplices.

Then there’s the issue of race. The no-parole sentences are hardly race neutral. Black teens are 10 times more likely to receive a no-parole life sentence than white youths. They are even more likely to get those sentences when their victims are white. This was the case in the two Florida cases the Supreme Court will look at. They are often tried by all-white or mostly-white juries. Those same juries seldom consider their age as a mitigating factor. The racial gap between black and white juvenile offenders is vast and troubling. The rush to toss the key on black juveniles has had terrible consequences in black communities. It has increased poverty, fractured families, and further criminalized a generation of young black men.

The Supreme Court in its decision to ban juvenile executions recognized that a civilized nation can’t call itself that if it executes its very young. The Supreme Court should recognize that a nation that locks up its very young and tosses the key away on them also can’t be called a civilized nation. It should scrap the no-parole life sentences for juveniles.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst whose radio show, “The Hutchinson Report,” can be heard weekly KTYM Radio and blogtalkradio.com.

Blog by James Bell

I continue to be amazed at how many people continue to behave as though race and involvement with the criminal justice system are synonymous. Has it become an accepted fact of life in the United States that the machinery of justice applies almost solely to people of color? I shuddered to realize this once again while reading editorials about the Supreme Court’s deliberations regarding juveniles receiving life imprisonment without the possibility of parole in the U.S., the only country that engages in this barbaric practice.

While I was heartened by the arguments proffered regarding brain development and laws that restrict children from voting, serving on juries, buying alcohol and cigarettes — something was missing. In most of the editorials in mainstream media, it was rare to find any analysis of race and how justice systems operate in neighborhoods made up mostly of people of color in poverty. In the alternative press, an AlterNet article mentioned an important fact: Black prisoners account for 84 percent of those in prison for life without the possibility of parole in Florida, the state with the most people expected to perish this way in prison. Nationally, black youths are serving life without parole at a rate of about 10 times that of white youths, according to Human Rights Watch. Amy Bach’s recent book, “Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court,” further recounts such justice by geography and race.

As someone who works every day to prevent youth of color from being undeservedly trapped by the labyrinth that is today’s justice system, perplexed is an understatement to describe my feelings as reporters and commentators continue to accept the disproportionate impact of justice on communities of color. We must combat the normalization of this phenomenon. Why isn’t it a story that most black and brown youth are detained for low-level administrative violations rather than crimes that endanger public safety? Why isn’t there more media attention around the fact that youth of color are securely confined in numbers that cannot be accounted for by crime alone? Why is there not more scrutiny regarding biased decision-making that when examined with data shows that for the same offenses for which white youth are released, youth of color are detained?

These are tough questions to answer when one realizes that at the heart of such issues is yet another a conversation about race. The case of a 5-year-old black girl in Florida comes to mind, who in 2005 was handcuffed and arrested by three police officers after throwing a tantrum in class. The public response to the shocking tape of her arrest ranged from blame directed toward the police and the school principal – to blame directed at the child and her family. Many comments below the YouTube video of her arrest featured racist attacks. But other than legal action pursued by her family, public outcry was tempered.

When another little black girl, 6-year-old Desre’e Watson was arrested in her kindergarten class in Florida two years later for a similar classroom tantrum, she was booked in the Highland County jail and charged with a felony and two misdemeanors. On the other hand, when Zachary Christie, a white 6-year-old, was suspended from first grade and faced 45 days in an alternative school for troublemakers for taking a combination knife/fork/spoon to school, the widespread public outrage that followed led the school board to change the penalty for all young students to a three to five day suspension.

Zachary’s punishment called into question harsh school “zero-tolerance” policies, and led to a change of policy in the local system. The cases of the two little black girls who became involved in the criminal justice system for throwing tantrums in kindergarten did not impact policy or practice.

In order to deconstruct who is detained and why in a local juvenile justice system, those who make such decisions — including schools, the police, juvenile court judges, and prosecutors — must have the courage to examine how their juvenile justice apparatus operates, and what impacts their decisions. Are their reactions to youth of color driven by fear, politics, anecdote and beliefs — or by data and informed analysis? We have found in our work that examining how decision-making points impact youth of color is an unnatural task for a local juvenile justice system to undertake. It is a shock to the institution. For that reason, there is an overall lack of accountability.

On any given day, more than 90,000 youth are in custody of the juvenile justice system. A majority of them are youth of color who are held for nonviolent offenses. For this, our society pays a high moral and financial price. A recently issued Justice Policy Institute report found that states spend approximately $5.7 billion each year imprisoning youth, although it has been shown that nonviolent youth can be supervised safely in the community with alternatives that cost substantially less than incarceration and that could lower recidivism by up to 22 percent. Studies show that incarcerated youth are less likely than those in alternative programs to graduate from high school, are more likely to be unemployed as adults, and are more likely to be arrested and imprisoned as adults.

Tragic cases that receive widespread attention, such as the beating death of 16-year-old Derrion Albert in Chicago, are horrific, but also rare. While some youth involved in serious or violent crime should be detained for public safety, the more than two-thirds of detained youth are charged with property offenses, public order offenses, or status offenses (i.e. running away or breaking curfew). Why is this so? Simply put, as a society we do not demand nor expect excellence, fairness, rationality or accountability from our child-serving justice systems. This should no longer be acceptable. There is too much at stake for our democratic principles and our ability to compete in a global knowledge-based world.

I am no economist or futurist, but I know that as a country we are not well-served when we have so many uneducated youth of color lost in a juvenile justice apparatus that dictates when they should eat, shower and exercise — then released to the world without much hope for turning their lives around through higher education or work. We can do better. But in order to do so we must demand accountability from juvenile justice systems early and often.

Today, let us begin by eliminating life in prison without the possibility of parole for children who have not taken a life.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20091116_The_limits_of_juvenile_sentencing.html

By Marsha Levick and David Fassler

Even in the face of the recent scandal involving the Luzerne County juvenile court, Pennsylvania can be proud of its leadership in protecting children in the justice system. Since 1995, the state has emphasized balanced, restorative justice as a core principle in the disposition of juvenile offenders.

Pennsylvania is among a minority of states that allow every juvenile transferred to adult court the opportunity to have the case returned to juvenile court for trial. Because of its progressive record, it was the first state the MacArthur Foundation chose to participate in its juvenile justice reform initiative.

But Pennsylvanians might be surprised to learn that we also hold a more dubious distinction with regard to youthful offenders: We have more children sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole than any other state in the country.

Young offenders must be held accountable, but affording them the chance to have their sentences reviewed later in life is hardly inconsistent with this goal. Adolescents who have served significant time behind bars should have the opportunity to demonstrate that they have been rehabilitated and deserve release. Juvenile life sentences ignore the likelihood that the offenders will be very different people after they serve extended sentences.

They also fail to recognize that children cannot be held accountable for their actions to the same degree as adults. Research shows that adolescents are less able to resist peer pressure, remove themselves from dangerous surroundings, or make decisions and weigh consequences in a mature way.

Successful passage into adulthood is more difficult for adolescents who live in poverty, lack positive role models, or are exposed to violence. The malleability of adolescents also makes it more likely that they will reform with age.

The issue of juvenile life sentences in cases where no life was taken is now before the U.S. Supreme Court in Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida. The question presented in these cases, which were argued last week, is whether the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits the imprisonment of a juvenile offender for life without the possibility of parole.

In 2005, in Roper v. Simmons, the court held that it is unconstitutional to impose the death penalty on offenders under the age of 18. In his majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy explained that adolescents are less blameworthy than adults because of their relative immaturity, susceptibility to outside influences, impulsiveness, and greater chance for rehabilitation. For this reason, the court recognized that “juveniles have a greater claim than adults to be forgiven for failing to escape negative influences in their whole environment.”

Since Roper, experts have done additional research confirming the court’s reasoning. They have shown that, as a group, adolescents don’t have adults’ ability to resist pressure, restrain impulses, and make mature decisions. Adolescents are more prone to risky behavior, and they’re also more likely to grow out of it.

This developmental immaturity does not excuse criminal conduct. But it does diminish teenagers’ culpability and undermine the justifications for sentencing them to die in prison.

Every state has laws that acknowledge the special status of children. Youths under 18 are prohibited from voting, serving on juries, entering into contracts, or marrying without parental consent. Pennsylvania sets minimum ages for a range of activities that require mature judgment, including driving, purchasing alcohol or tobacco, and consenting to sexual activity. Criminal sentencing should not be the only area in which society fails to recognize the effects of youth on judgment, decision-making, and responsibility.

In Roper, the Supreme Court endorsed research showing that kids differ from adults in salient ways, and that we can’t know at the time of sentencing any particular adolescent’s capacity to rehabilitate. The court now has an opportunity to apply that understanding to sentences of life without parole, by ruling that all juveniles must have their sentences reviewed in the future, when we can make more informed decisions about keeping them in prison. Given all we know about adolescent development, the court should do away with this cruel and unusual punishment.

by Stuart Taylor Jr.

 

The November 9 Supreme Court arguments on whether it is cruel and unusual to impose life in prison without parole on violent juveniles who have not killed anybody understandably got prominent media coverage.

But a far more important imprisonment story gets less attention because it’s a running sore that rarely generates dramatic “news.” That is our criminal-justice system’s incarceration of a staggering 2.3 million people, about half of them for nonviolent crimes, including most of the 500,000 locked up for drug offenses.

Forty percent of these prisoners are black, 20 percent are Hispanic, and most are poor and uneducated. This has had a devastating impact on poor black families and neighborhoods, where it has become the norm for young men — many of them fathers — to spend time in prison and emerge bitter, unemployable, and unmarriageable. (These numbers come from studies cited by Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a reform group.)

America imprisons seven times as many people as it did in 1972, several times as many per capita as other Western nations, and many more than any other nation in the world.

Yes, violent criminals should be locked up for long enough to protect the rest of us. But the mass, long-term imprisonment of nonviolent, nondangerous offenders in recent decades and excessive terms for others has made us no safer while ruining countless lives and converting potentially productive citizens into career criminals.

The 13-year-old rapist and the 17-year-old serial robber-burglar who are serving life without parole in two Florida cases inspired impassioned comments from justices with opposing views. But the outcome may not have much impact on these two prisoners or anyone else. Even if the Court strikes down their sentences, the state will be free to resentence them to serve, say, 40 years before being eligible for parole, and thereafter to deny successive parole applications until they die. And even if the Court upholds life without parole, the state will be free in the future to relent and release them.

Meanwhile, the damage done by America’s prison binge over the past 30 to 40 years dwarfs the importance of all of the Court’s pending criminal cases.

To be sure, budget problems in recent years have forced some states to hold down their prison populations by relaxing drug sentences. And California is under federal court order to release 40,000 people from its badly overcrowded prisons. Perhaps the budgetary pressure will open more minds to the impressive body of research suggesting that imposing severe prison terms on more and more people is not the best way to fight crime.

Another glimmer of hope is that a bipartisan group of senators, with Obama administration support, is working to ratchet down the overpunishment of mostly nonviolent crack cocaine offenders, 80 percent of whom are black. Tens of thousands are now locked up under grotesquely excessive federal mandatory minimum sentences of five years (for simple possession of 5 grams of crack), 10 years (50 grams with intent to distribute), and more.

But the crack penalties are just the tip of an overpunishment iceberg. And although it’s not growing as fast as before, it’s not shrinking either. “What we’re seeing so far is just a slowing of growth — a tinkering around the edges,” Mauer says.

At a cost of $60 billion a year, our prisons and jails do very little to counsel, educate, train, or otherwise prepare prisoners to get jobs and go straight after they’re released. They are barred from public housing, treated as outcasts by many employers, and often surrounded by other ex-cons in their neighborhoods. This makes for very high recidivism, with about two-thirds of those released being rearrested within three years.

The impact on black communities is especially dramatic.

* Blacks are imprisoned at a rate eight times as high as whites.

* Nearly 60 percent of black male high school dropouts, and nearly 30 percent of all black men (if current trends continue), will spend time behind bars — far more than in the worst days of segregation. The result: “In America’s inner cities, incarceration has become the more-likely-than-not norm, not the unthinkable exception,” Georgetown University Law School’s David Cole recently wrote in The New York Review of Books.

* The number of drug prisoners increased elevenfold from 1980 to 1997, and the number of black drug prisoners more than quadrupled from 1985 to 1991, according to Cole. Not many of them fit the “drug kingpin” label used by politicians to justify long prison terms.

I don’t attribute these glaring racial disparities to racist animus. Blacks do commit highly disproportionate percentages of violent as well as nonviolent crimes. And some rich white men also get savagely severe prison terms, such as the 25 and 24 years — more than most murderers — imposed on former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers and former Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling, whose appeal is now before the Supreme Court, respectively.

But it’s fair to say that our criminal-justice system is helping to create “a racially defined pariah class in the middle of our great cities,” as Brown professor Glenn Loury says in his 2008 book, Race, Incarceration, and American Values.

The prison binge started out as a reaction to crime rates that began soaring in the 1960s, and the federal mandatory minimums were largely a response to the inner-city crack wars of the 1980s. But imprisonment rose more than crime, owing to adoption of draconian mandatory minimum sentences by state legislatures and Congress; restrictions on (and sometimes abolition of) parole; and other “tough on crime” policies.

The nascent countertrend noted above reflects not only budget pressures but also the efforts of reformers such as Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va.; Mauer; Julie Stewart, founder of Families Against Mandatory Minimums; and their counterparts at the state level. Although it has not yet reduced the prison population, there’s room for hope that it might.

More than 20 states eased some criminal sentences between 2004 and 2006, including New York’s relaxation of its especially harsh Rockefeller drug law. Others have made it easier for well-behaved prisoners to win early release and diverted drug offenders from prisons to treatment programs. At least 19 states have also relaxed their felon disenfranchisement laws — one of the many indignities imposed on ex-prisoners who have served their time — since 1997.

At the federal level, there is an overwhelming policy case for abolishing all of the numerous mandatory minimum sentences that Congress adopted for drug offenses in 1986 and 1988, and relying instead on the common sense of the judges who know the facts of each case and the defendant’s history. Yes, some judges would be too lenient. But federal prosecutors can appeal lenient sentences.

So far, however, most of the Democrats who control Congress seem too worried about opening themselves up to unwarranted Republican attacks for being “soft on crime” to do away with mandatory minimums.

How much could we reduce the prison population without turning a horde of violent predators loose on the rest of us? By a lot.

Experts disagree about how much of the steep plunge in crime rates from about 1994 to 2004 is attributable to locking up so many criminals and how much it owes to demographics. But most of the estimated 1.2 million prisoners locked up for nonviolent offenses are not especially dangerous. Scholars including Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy at the University of California (Los Angeles), contend that for violent as well as nonviolent offenders, long prison terms — which most potential criminals don’t expect to incur — do less to deter crime than would swifter and surer imposition of less onerous penalties. Even probation, Kleiman writes, can be a real deterrent if accompanied by tough conditions and oversight.

In his recent book, When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment, Kleiman argues that the correct reforms would lead to “half as much crime and half as many people behind bars 10 years from now.”

“Half as much crime” sounds pretty optimistic, in part because getting our criminal-justice system to do anything swiftly and surely would be a tall order. But reducing the number of people behind bars by several hundred thousand, or even 1 million, seems a reasonable goal.

After all, an incarcerated population of 1.3 million (down from 2.3 million) would still be four times as many — and well over twice as many per capita — as in 1972, when we had 326,000 prisoners.

But budgetary pressures and reformers can move us only so far toward more-sensible sentencing policies unless and until politicians become more enlightened about how best to fight crime.

And we cannot count on much help from the Supreme Court, which in 2003 upheld no-parole sentences, under California’s “three strikes” law, of 50 years for shoplifting $150 worth of children’s videos and 25 years for stealing three golf clubs.