A very brief diary. I was just skimming the online version of Aftenposten – Norway’s paper of record – and came across an article about punishment of minors. The article was primarily based on this recently released report from Human Rights Watch:
The Rest of Their Lives
Life without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States
I only read the summary, but that alone is quite illuminating. I guess we keep piling it on here at BT for the US – in this case, it is well deserved.
Some “highlights”:
This report is the first ever national analysis of life without parole sentences for children. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have discovered that there are currently at least 2,225 people incarcerated in the United States who have been sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison for crimes they committed as children. In the United States, departments of corrections do not maintain publicly accessible and accurate statistics about child offenders incarcerated in adult prisons, and there is no national depository of these data. Therefore, we were able to collect data on individuals sentenced to life without parole for crimes they committed as children only by requesting that it be specially produced for us by each state’s corrections department.
Virtually all countries in the world reject the punishment of life without parole for child offenders. At least 132 countries reject life without parole for child offenders in domestic law or practice. And all countries except the United States and Somalia have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which explicitly forbids “life imprisonment without possibility of release” for “offenses committed by persons below eighteen years of age.” Of the 154 countries for which Human Rights Watch was able to obtain data, only three currently have people serving life without parole for crimes they committed as children, and it appears that those four countries combined have only about a dozen such cases.
So the US has not ratified the CRC, there are at least 2,225 prisoners convicted to life without parole for crimes committed while they were children vs. “about a dozen” in the rest of the world that can be surveyed!
Fortunately, there are states that do not allow this shameful practice, but they are in a tiny minority – only 7 states and the District of Columbia prohibit such harsh sentencing.
Our research shows significant differences among the states in the use of life without parole sentences for children. For example, Virginia, Louisiana, and Michigan have rates that are three to seven-and-a-half times higher than the national average of 1.77 per 100,000 children nationwide. At the other end of the spectrum, New Jersey and Utah permit life without parole for children but have no child offenders currently serving the sentence. Alaska, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, New Mexico, New York, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia all prohibit the sentence for youth offenders.
Should the US remain in solidarity with Somalia as the only nations that have not ratified the CRC?
I really should be working, but this really ticked me off. Locking up kids and throwing away the keys!
Ten states do not have a minimum age for such sentencing. Kids down to 10 years of age languish for the rest of their lives in prison. This is horrendous.
For anyone who can access this through Times Select (don’t worry, I didn’t give them my money for this “privilege”), the New York Times reported on this on October 3 in a front-page article: “Locked Away Forever After Crimes as Teenagers”. The abstract is available to all.
The Times was given an advance copy of the Amnesty International/Human Rights Watch report, as their article is extensively based on its findings, and includes additional reporting based on their own analysis and discussions with lawyers, jurors and directly affected individuals. Quoting from one portion of the NYT story,
While not every felon can be fully rehabilitated, it’s horrid to think of cases like this where people are denied any opportunity of ever reintegrating themselves into society at any level.
Thanks TM, for the extract of the article (for those of us who do not want to pay).
I had missed the NYT-story as I was abroad for a couple of weeks. The report itself (as posted on the web) is simply dated ‘October 2005’.
Just want to add one more quote from the report:
(My emphasis, as was the case in the entry itself.)
From what I can discern, the actual AI/HRW report was officially released today (Oct. 12), though certainly there were copies circulating prior to this. That’s obviously the best way for any advocacy organization to draw media attention timed to the report’s release; if they don’t want the information to get published by someone too early, they’ll label their report “embargoed until [date]”, and almost everyone in the media will respect that.
For anyone who wants to read the entire article from which I quoted, I’ve been able to locate a generally-accessible version of the complete NYT story (i.e., no paying, no registration), published in the Sarasota Herald Tribune, which is owned by the New York Times Company. Odd how they’d be inconsistent regarding their comparative archives.
I hope your trip abroad was enjoyable (whether for business or pleasure). One of these days we’ll have to have another NYC-area meetup, since I missed the last one. Right now, things might prove to be a bit testy between the Ferrer supporters and Bloomberg defenders, and it would probably be unwise to alienate and drive away the latter group from future participation.
You were certainly missed at the last meet-up.
Don’t get me started on the local race – too bad the Dems had such a boring set of candidates vying for the job – but Mayor Mike has sold out way too many times and is an embarassment for the city.
The trip to Sudan was no vacation – maybe I’ll do an entry, but if so, I’d need to spend more time than on this one. Weekend, maybe.
I strongly doubt that I’m the only one who’d be very interested in hearing about anything from this trip to Sudan, but definitely take your time putting a diary together. At work, I’ve been involved in tracking a federal lawsuit arising out of the conflict in southern Sudan, so I might actually be able to talk somewhat intelligently about some of the things you may have encountered or dealt with.
With regard to the mayoral race, I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the inevitable result, though I’m none too happy about it. Ferrer’s biggest problem in attracting voters seems to be that he hasn’t really given anyone a terribly good reason to vote for him. Meanwhile, I’m becoming increasingly antsy about Corzine in NJ. The senator seems committed to be vying for the title of Worst Campaign Ever. I still think he’ll win in the end, but the race should’ve been a putaway on the order of next year’s NYS races (Spitzer and Hillary, each ahead by nearly 30 points in early polls).
some countries, Western Europe, in particular, does tend to see rehabilitation as a goal, some will say even a more important one than punishment, for someone who has broken the law to be rehabilitated and go on to live a law-abiding productive life is seen to accord a benefit to the society as a whole.
US has a different perspective, the culture has more affinity with punishment, and since the poor are disproportionately represented in the prisons, it is actually better for the prison industry to keep the person in prison, and while there, break their personalities so completely that recidivism is almost assured, thus generating a more robust revenue stream, which is seen to accord a benefit to the industry as a whole.
Regarding the question in the original post, it would not be in the best interest of either the US or Somalia to sign the Rights of the Child Treaty, since that would preclude recruitment and enlistment of anyone under eighteen, and it is more likely that US will need to be lowering their minimum age for gunmen, not raising it. There are also some who argue that the Rights of the Child Treaty could give ammunition to anti-American elements who might use the treaty as a propaganda weapon to push non-business-friendly agendas regarding medical treatment, a high-profit commodity in the US.
Heh – so I was just over at Kos for a bit of reading and what did I find?
Maryscott O’Connor has the top recommended diary entry at the moment on this story, with a great rant and link to an article in today’s Independent/UK.
Thanks for reminding me why I like it here soooooooo much better.
rba, I gave you a ‘four’, but only because I couldn’t give you an ‘eight’. My sentiments exactly.
Tangential Problem – But Just as Unbelievable! What happened to these kids?
Justice Department didn’t hesitate when looking for an organization to lead the effort to reunite thousands of children with their parents in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Despite a massive extra workload and no extra money — at least not yet — the Center for Missing and Exploited Children took the job.
“It is quite a bit to be added to our plate, but we think this is a horrendous catastrophe and we wanted to be responsive,” said Ernie Allen, the group’s president.
The center had located half the 4,598 children reported missing. In Louisiana, 2,038 of 4,232 cases have been resolved; in Mississippi, 244 out of 329; and in Alabama, 13 out of 37.
After the government put the center in charge, it immediately dispatched to the Gulf Coast nearly 20 of its 46 national consultants for “Team Adam” — the rapid-response system established two years ago to handle some of the most urgent child abduction cases. The team was named in memory of Adam Walsh, the 6-year-old son of “America’s Most Wanted” host John Walsh, who in 1981 was abducted from a Florida department store and murdered.
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The US does not believe in rehabilitation, and hasn’t for decades. The broader issue of prison reform is not even on the radar in D.C. We help create the sociopaths that are released back into society after attending “crime school” (prison).
Another sloganeered set of laws enacted by our friends in Congress, with tacit approval by the American public. We’re in for a long battle on this one.
This just breaks my heart. I work professionally in a community-based organization with kids who are likely to go this direction. We do everything we can to hold them accountable and help them mend what are mostly very broken lives already.
Just today, our staff were trying to figure out how to help a young woman who’s mother lives in another state and is a cocaine addict. She recently moved here to live with her father, who is an alcoholic and extremely violent (the police told us to be careful around him because of this). Child protection will not help her because she is 16, mom has legal custody, and she has no visible injuries from her father’s beatings. And yet we’d be ready to lock her up for life if she lashes out in some violent way. Our system is set up so that we wait until she hurts someone and then we get mad at her. But where’s the help now when she’s pretty desperate?
I could go on forever about this topic. But its late. Thanks for having an interest in this VERY serious issue!
I will tell you my first reaction when I saw the headline that was the source of this story: I thought, “Finally! Someone is doing a story on the fact that poor children are virtually sentenced to poverty for life!”
NO, (my second thought) “It’s about poor children with mental health problems being ‘sentenced’ to the penal system because there are no adequate mental health services available anymore.”
And no, I was wrong. It’s a third thing. I guess I’ve lived in Michigan for too long. I’ve almost lost my capacity to be angry about young persons being sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for crimes committed as juveniles. At least we don’t have the death penalty in this state. Some consolation, however small.
Even though there is a grain of truth linking my second possibility to the actual news story, how is it that I can be incensed about this report, and yet disappointed that the other stories I thought were going to be the topic, were not the topic at all?
There may be a little comfort in reading this (same link as in diary entry):
Yes, well, Roper v. Simmons was a 5-4 decision. I have little doubt it will eventually be altered in some form.
Thanks,
I was unaware that the decision was split down the middle. What was the minority opinion? Executing minors is OK?
Yep. Older decisions had said it was constitutional. But the latest decision said that public opinion had changed to disapproving of executing minors (some states had changes their laws.) They referred not only to our states, but to international laws as well.
The usual suspects – the gang of 4, disagreed, saying that the 5 had wrongly ignored precedents of past decisions, shouldn’t have counted states with no death penalty in their count of states against executing minors, and other things. I’m not a lawyer and I may well be misinterpreting their arguments, but those are some of their central points, IMO.
Why are there deep cultural differences between Europe and the U.S. Why are people in the US so bloodthirsty and punitive? I mean you can account for deep cultural differences between, say, Europe and China, by pointing to thousands and thousands of years of history. But most people in the US are European-Americans–their ancestors came from Europe.
Some point to the Calvinist influence in the US. But what about Switzerland? That’s where Calvinism started. They don’t lock up children and throw away the key.
Did you post this at European Tribune too, Ask?
Hi TWfnW – long time,
No – did not post this anywhere else. But your point is very valid. I’ll put it up there now, it’s lunchbreak.