New report from Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth details the state of juvenile LWOP sentences in the US

Via email, I learned of this new report from the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth titled “Unusual & Unequal: The Unfinished Business of Ending Life Without Parole for Children in the United States.”  Because this group advocates for the abolition of juvenille LWOP sentences, this report primarily laments that there are still a few hundred persons convicted as juveniles serving this sentence, though it notes the fact that “over the past decade, … the population of [juvenile offenders] serving [an LWOP] sentence decreas[ed] by 85%.”  

The report include a lot of data about juve LWOP laws and the (re)sentencing of many offenders in the wake of the Supreme Court’s major Eighth Amendment rulings in Miller and Montgomery.  I recommend the short report to anyone eager to understand the current state of juvenile LWOP sentencing.  The report concludes with the kind of advocacy that has been a hallmark of the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth:

A concentration of a few states have unevenly complied with Miller and the possibility of resentencing provided by Montgomery.  Some have refused to comply at all.

This uneven implementation of the Miller decision has a particularly profound impact on racial disparities among those serving JLWOP.  An analysis of those deemed worth protecting from JLWOP and those deemed fit for the sentence suggests that as long as JLWOP remains a sentencing option, it will be imposed in ways that produce arbitrary and racially discriminatory outcomes.  It will also be leveraged to legitimize the extreme sentences of children in other forms, that still fail to consider their unique capacity for positive change.

Miller and the ensuing procedures guiding JLWOP imposition have not been sufficient guardrails to combat these risks. States must go further to address these inequalities and recognize what science and common sense have clearly demonstrated: that children are categorically different from adults, less culpable, and should be provided opportunities to demonstrate their tremendous potential for positive growth and change.