For Kids, Life Means Life
By Sentencing youthful offenders (that’s kids who are convicted for crimes) to life incarceration violates virtually every human rights norm out there. According to Human Rights Watch, there are only 7 people outside the United States who were sentenced to life in prison while minors.
Wanna guess how many kids are currently locked up for life in California alone?
227. In one single solitary state.
For the U.S. as a whole, the number of people serving life without parole for offenses committed as minors is 2,225. According to an editorial in yesterday’s LA Times (which is, I think, far surpassing its rival the NYT in terms of quality of opinion page content), not only have these kids received lifetime sentences for crimes they committed when they were under the age of 17, but they were also sentenced without the possibility of parole. Which means there is absolutely zero possibility that theyw ill leave prison alive.
As should not be surprising given the US’s record of human rights violations through incarceration (and given the numbers quoted at the top of this post), we are an outlier on this issue. Waaaaaay outlier.
And it’s yet further proof that the idea of prison as rehabilitation remains a cruel joke.