Many times, America has been willing to stand alone against the world if necessary. Apparently, December 2006 was one of those times. The United Nations called for the abolition of life imprisonment without parole (LWOP) for children and young teenagers. The final vote – 185 to 1. The long dissenter? The United States.
It’s an odd dichotomy. The US was one of the pioneers in the area of juvenile justice. At one time, we recognized that children are not small adults. They don’t think the same, they don’t act the same. But somewhere in the last hundred years, we’ve progressed in our thinking and determined that it makes perfect sense to sentence a 13 year old to die in prison.
Yes, 13 year olds. In 2005, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reported that there are more than 2200 prisoners in the US serving life without parole for crimes committed at age 17 or younger – compared to 12 such cases in the rest of the world. 59% of those children had never been convicted of a previous crime. 26% of them were convicted of felony murder – they were involved in a crime that led to murder but had not killed themselves.
The Equal Justice Initiative has taken the research a step further, and found something even more unsettling. There are 73 offenders serving life without parole for crimes committed when they were no older than 14. Almost all are a result of trying juveniles as adults for crimes carrying a mandatory life sentence. Pennsylvania, Florida, Nebraska, North Carolina and Washington have all sentenced 13 year olds to die in prison.
We don’t allow a child that age to drive a car. They cannot vote, or sign a contract. They cannot drink, or smoke a cigarette. For that matter, most schools won’t allow them to take an aspirin. Our society has decided that children are not capable of making decisions of that importance. But we think they’re adult enough to lock them up and throw away the key.
What kind of insanity is this? Does it really make sense to try children as adults and lock them up forever? Or would it make more sense to re-vamp the juvenile justice system and give it the tools to work with these young offenders?
Don’t we owe it to our children to at least make an effort to help them help themselves before we decide to warehouse them and forget them?
