Locking Up Kids and Throwing Away the Key

by Clara Long · 2010-03-19 07:09:00 UTC
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FenceEveryone believes that kids –- even those that commit terrible crimes -– are redeemable. Except America. The U.S. is the only country in the world that does not (yet) comply with the human rights norm against imposing the interminable ‘life without parole’ sentence on children under the age of 18. There are over 100 people nationwide serving life without parole sentences for crimes less than murder.

The Supreme Court now has a chance to bring the U.S. in line with the rest of the world. Two cases argued last fall ask the court to ban life without parole sentences for kids who committed crimes less than murder.

Graham v. Florida involves a 17-year old sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole after his conviction for violating a probationary sentence, imposed a year earlier, for felony robbery. In Sullivan v. Florida, a 13-year old received a life without parole sentence for a sexual battery conviction.

There’s a clear-cut constitutional argument against these sorts of sentences. In a case four years ago the Court decided that the execution of children violates the 8th Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. If you can’t execute children for their crimes then neither should you be able to put them away until they die.

This reasoning has motivated some states (including Texas!) to ban the life without parole sentence for juveniles.  Indeed, two states have recently passed -- and at least 11 states are considering -- legislation that would end life sentences for those under 18 years old or, more generally, restrict charging juveniles as adults.

But even if some states have caught wind of what human rights and the constitution require, it's up to the Supreme Court to bring the United States in line with the international norm against lifetime sentences for children.  Taking international norms into account is exactly what the Court did when it outlawed executing children and the Court caught a lot of flack for it. What critics don’t realize is that if the whole world has decided kids shouldn’t be locked up forever, that probably means we’re behind the curve.

Photo credit: dogbomb

Clara Long is a member of the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School.
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