Original Article Study: 2,225 serving life for crimes as juveniles By Hope Yen The Associated Press WASHINGTON There are 2,225 people serving life terms in prison without parole for crimes committed as juveniles, most of them in a handful of states where judges don't have the discretion to impose lighter penalties. A report being released today by Amnesty International USA and Human Rights Watch found that a surge in violent crime in the late 1980s and early 1990s led to tougher sentencing laws and a jump in the number of juveniles sent to prison for the rest of their lives. Pennsylvania has the most such inmates (332), followed by Louisiana (317), Michigan (306) and Florida (273). All four states have laws making life without parole mandatory for certain crimes and don't allow judges to lighten sentences. Washington state has 23 such inmates. The groups say the sentence amounts to cruel and unusual punishment for criminals who may not be mature enough to grasp the consequences of their actions. They want the United States to abolish the penalty. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled that executing juvenile killers was unconstitutional. According to the study, 93 percent of juvenile offenders sentenced to life without parole were convicted of murder. Fifty-nine percent had no prior convictions, and 16 percent were 15 or under. Dianne Clements, president of the victims advocacy group Justice for All, said taking away life-without-parole sentences would remove a strong deterrent to crime. Copyright 2005 The Seattle Times Company http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10349959 US throws away the key for 2225 child offenders 13.10.05 By Andrew Gumbel Human rights groups have accused the United States of throwing away the lives of more than 2000 children and young teenagers sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say the US is the only country on the planet to punish juveniles so severely on a routine basis. The punishment is entirely out of step with international law but is one increasingly popular with US tough-on-crime legislators. Their study counted 2225 child offenders on "life row" in 42 states. In the rest of the world, by contrast, they found only a dozen other cases restricted to three countries - Israel, South Africa and Tanzania. "Criminal punishment in the US can serve four goals: rehabilitation, retribution, deterrence and incapacitation," the report concluded. "No punishment should be more severe than necessary. Sentencing children to life fails on all counts." Some US states permit the imposition of a life sentence without parole to offenders as young as 10. The youngest actually serving is 13. Roughly one-sixth of those locked up for life committed their offence when they were under 16. Almost 60 per cent were given their sentence for their first offence. In most cases, the crime in question was murder. But about one quarter of those locked up, the report found, were not the actual murderers, merely participants in a robbery or burglary in which a murder was committed by someone else. In many US states, draconian laws stipulate that being present at the scene of a murder can be equivalent to being guilty of the murder. Remarkably, the report found that while the number of juvenile offenders being sentenced to life has gone up markedly over the past 25 years, the rate of serious juvenile crime has actually gone down. In most years since 1985, juveniles were sentenced to life without parole at a faster rate than adult murderers. Politicians have found that it pays significant electoral dividends to advocate "zero tolerance" policies. As a result, legislators have introduced ever tougher regimes of minimum sentencing, including one Californian law whereby non-violent offenders can face life without parole if they are caught three times. Amnesty and Human Rights Watch said the attitude of "adult time for adult crimes" was entirely inappropriate. Sentencing teenagers to life in prison removed all motivation for education or self-improvement. Being in an adult prison rather than a juvenile facility also exposed them to a heightened risk of assault and rape, rampant in US institutions. Sentencing children to life without parole is specifically forbidden under the UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child. The report found that black offenders were 10 times more likely to receive a life sentence without parole than white offenders. "Children can and do commit terrible crimes," the report conceded. "When they do, they should be held accountable, but in a manner that reflects their special capacity for rehabilitation." - INDEPENDENT