Monday Map: Kids Behind Bars

by Matt Kelley · 2008-11-17 05:30:00 UTC
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Last week, prosecutors in Arizona charged an eight-year-old boy, in adult court, with two counts of first-degree murder for allegedly shooting his father and a neighbor. He will undergo psychiatric evaluations before he can be tried as an adult, to determine whether he understands the charges against him.

America is one of few counties in the world that would even consider trying this boy as a adult, and his case has raised again the question of whether we are sentencing our juvenile offenders too harshly. About 2,500 people are currently behind bars until they die for crime committed before they were 18. The map above shows the distribution of these 2,225 prisoners serving life without parole (LWOP) across the country, with data from a 2005 report from Human Rights Watch and the ACLU.

Children can be sentenced to life without parole in 45 states, and the United States is nearly alone in sentencing to kids to life without parole. There are fewer than 12 people around the world serving life without parole for crimes they committed as juveniles. In 2006, the United Nations held a vote condemning the practice of juvenile LWOP - the vote was 185 to 1, with the U.S. the lone dissenter. Public opinion about juvenile LWOP is changing and several states could consider reforms to sentencing policy in 2009. One Mississippi lawmaker has already said he'll introduce a bill repealing juvenile LWOP.

The Connecticut Supreme Court last week found that juvenile LWOP is not cruel and unusual punishement, and the blog a public defender pointed last week to studies of developing brain function in juveniles that reinforce the notion that juveniles can be rehabilitated.

Prisons should seek to rehabilitate people. By giving up on kids and sentencing them to life in prison, our country shows its true goals with prison - to punish. And we're alone in the world. It's time to build a more humane prison system, focused on rehabilitation not punishment.

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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