Battleangel

Hopefully this will go the same way as the Juvenile Death Penalty. But currently, as is outlined in the report, these sentences are on the rise.

Reuters - There are at least 2,225 child offenders serving life without parole (LWOP) sentences in U.S prisons for crimes committed before they were age 18, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said in a new joint report published today. While many of the child offenders are now adults, 16 percent were between 13 and 15 years old at the time they committed their crimes. An estimated 59 percent were sentenced to life without parole for their first-ever criminal conviction. Forty-two states currently have laws allowing children to receive life without parole sentences.

Here is the full report. There are some pretty horrible examples in there, especially with regard to the quaint “felony murder” concept, about as outdated as life without parole. One should also remember that many states have extensive juvenile detention centers or prison like compounds and that the idea of rehabilitation or care often never cross the mind of US officials. As such, these statistics is doubly worrying and, I fear, just a symptom of a much worse and bigger ailment in US society.