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Results for miller v. alabama

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Author: Phillips Black Project

Title: Juvenile Life Without Parole After Miller v. Alabama

Summary: Across the country, we are beginning to turn the page on juvenile justice policies that are out of step with science, medicine, and common sense. They were informed by the popular myth of the juvenile superpredator. The prophesied generation of superpredators has never materialized, and the promised benefits of criminalizing childhood never arrived. The policies the myth spawned, however, remain. The results of these polices have been troubling. They created a straight line from poorly funded schools to juvenile hall and on to the institutions of adult mass incarceration. Our nation's least-advantaged children, the children of poverty, mental illness, and historically discriminated against groups, have fared the worst under these policies. Children of color have been disproportionately adjudicated as delinquents and institutionalized while their peers were far more frequently allowed to work things out without involving courts and jails. We stripped courts and prosecutors of the discretion required to provide treatment tailored to juveniles' individual needs, blinding our institutions to the reality that children are fundamentally different than adults. And we have sentenced thousands of our nation's youth to die in prison for crimes they committed before they were old enough to vote. The time for change has come. Courts and legislatures are rejecting the most extreme policies that were the product of this era. The use of life without parole sentences for children is waning. Solitary confinement for children is ending. Legislators are promulgating laws permitting courts and prosecutors to treat children differently than adults. And courts are now being required to exercise discretion in light of the unique aspects of the individual child before imposing the most severe sentences authorized for juveniles. This report focuses on this last development. The report catalogues how U.S. jurisdictions have responded to the Supreme Court’s mandate to provide individualized sentencing of juveniles before sentencing them to life without possibility of parole. Even as we developed this report, states abandoned the practice of sentencing children to die in prison. We hope that the applicability of this report to juvenile life without parole sentencing will continue to decrease as juvenile life without parole sentences become exceedingly rare. However, we have focused on this mandate because it is premised on the need for individualized consideration at sentencing. We are each more than the worst thing we have ever done, a reality particularly salient for impetuous youth. When sentencing judges are able to consider a juvenile for who that person is as a unique individual and are able to tailor treatment accordingly, the mythical superpredator disappears, and a juvenile justice system very different than the one we currently have will emerge.

Details: St. Louis, MO: Phillips Black Project, 2015. 106p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 20, 2015 at: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55bd511ce4b0830374d25948/t/55f9d0abe4b0ab5c061abe90/1442435243965/Juvenile+Life+Without+Parole+After+Miller++.pdf

Year: 2015

Country: United States

URL: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55bd511ce4b0830374d25948/t/55f9d0abe4b0ab5c061abe90/1442435243965/Juvenile+Life+Without+Parole+After+Miller++.pdf

Shelf Number: 137030

Keywords:
Juvenile Offenders
Juvenile Sentencing
Life Imprisonment
Life Sentence
Life Without Parole
Miller v. Alabama