I'm afraid it's more depressing than that. These are early teenagers that end up living their life, from age 13-17 to death, in prison, for something stupid that they did. Tanzania has one such case, South Africa has four, and Israel has between four and seven. The US has two thousand, two hundred and twenty five such cases. Every other country in the world has zero. In fact, there are only a handful of countries that even have the legal allowance of such a sentence, but they rarely if ever use it.
The average age at admission to prison was eighteen years old; the youngest entered prison at age fourteen and the oldest was twenty-six years old. Nevertheless, 29 percent, or just under one-third of all the offenders studied, were admitted to adult penitentiaries while they were still children. I'll let you take one guess what happens to kids in an adult prison:
Penitentiaries in the United States are not designed to further rehabilitation, and youth offenders sentenced to life without parole are often barred from participating in the few programs that do exist. Youth offenders serving life without parole face an additional and daunting challenge in they must come to terms with the fact that they will live in prison for the rest of their lives. Unsurprisingly, the suicide rate is through the roof. LWOPs cannot participate in many rehabilitative, educational, vocational training or other assignments available to other inmates with parole dates . . . The supposed rationality is that LWOPs are beyond salvagability and would just be taking a spot away from someone who will actually return to society someday.
Other offenders serving life without parole dream of playing a positive, redeeming role in society at some hypothetical point in the future. Troy L., who was fifteen when he murdered his abusive father, was interviewed for this report at age twenty-four in June 2004. He wrote in a subsequent letter:
Some offenders manage to avoid drugs and alcohol in prison, a relevant accomplishment when substance abuse was a factor in their earlier criminal behavior. Thomas M., who was fifteen at the time of his offense and was interviewed in prison at age twenty, told a researcher for this report:
Criminal punishment in the United States can serve four goals: rehabilitation, retribution, deterrence, and incapacitation. The effectiveness of any punishment-whether life in prison or a week in jail-should be measured against the yardstick of these four goals and should accord with the widely accepted corollary that no punishment should be more severe than necessary to achieve these stated goals.
Sentencing children to life without parole fails to measure up on all counts.
