Youth organizations lobby against Life without Parole
13th March 2017 · 0 Comments
By Kari Dequine Harden
Contributing Writer
Last year, the passage of a bill raising the age of juvenile jurisdiction in Louisiana from 16 to 17 years old marked a victory for advocates of juvenile justice reform, by changing the law to include 17-year-olds as juveniles, and bringing Louisiana in step with a vast majority of other states.
There have been a number of improvements to the system in recent years, and a gradually changing mentality, said Aaron Clark-Rizzio, executive director of the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights (LCCR). The Raise the Age bill will go into effect in 2018 in its first phase, and will be fully implemented by 2020.
“We know that at 17 a young person’s brain is still developing,” said Gov. John Bel Edwards when he signed the bill into law in June of 2016. “We recognize this when it comes to voting, joining the military, or even buying a lottery ticket. We should give prosecutors and district attorneys the flexibility to recognize that as well when it comes to the age-appropriate sentencing that 41 other states and 66 percent of Louisianians support. In the end, it’s about not giving up on any young person.”
With a growing understanding of adolescent brain development, it is “critical the system treat children as children,” Clark-Rizzio said, and the continued push for additional reforms “reflects an understanding that we need to keep kids safe while in custody, and we need to provide appropriate services while they are in custody.”
With about 325 youth currently in juvenile detention centers in Louisiana, that represents a significant drop in total numbers over the past five years, Clark-Rizzio said. But there’s still plenty of room for improvement, and ongoing needs that must be addressed, he said.
There are four specific legislative changes the Youth Justice Coalition (YJC) is pushing for as part of their 2017 agenda. The Coalition is made up of about 100 different groups, with staffing and support provided by the LCCR.
The first is a call for the elimination of a Life without Parole sentence for juvenile offenders. The U.S. is the only country in the world that sentences children to die in prison, according to the YJC.
The state also needs to fully comply with the 2012 Supreme Court ruling barring automatic life sentences for juvenile offenders except in the most extreme cases. Writing for the 6-3 majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said a life-without-parole sentence is always unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment for a juvenile offender, unless the defendant is found to be “irreparably corrupt” and “permanently incorrigible.”
The ruling was made retroactive in 2016.
Complying with the Supreme Court ruling will give “all children the opportunity to have their sentences reviewed by a parole board after serving a significant sentence. This allows people to reenter society only if they can prove complete rehabilitation. It holds children accountable while still recognizing their capacity for redemption,” according to the YJC.
It wouldn’t guarantee release, just a shot at release. Scientific evidence shows children are capable of positive change as they get older, and if paroled, the state would save $19,000 annually for each person on parole as opposed to in custody. The Life without Parole sentences have also been applied unequally, according to the YCR, with African-American kids making up 75 percent of the sentences.
The YCR tells the stories of Johnny, Toby, and Stanley – boys who were with other individuals at the time a murder was committed. Despite not having been the actual perpetrator of the murder, they all received life without parole. And they all used their years in prison to better themselves in every way they could and serve others, all exemplary candidates for parole.
Secondly, the YCR wants to repeal mandatory minimum sentences for children tried in juvenile court. Known as “Vitter kids,” juveniles convicted of certain serious offenses are given mandatory minimum sentences based on a 1993 law passed by then State Representative David Vitter.
The law remains an outlier in the system, Clark-Rizzio said. And the push to repeal it came primarily from what the YJC heard from the kids themselves. Whether they were a “Vitter kid” or knew one, the overwhelming feedback was about how damaging it was.
For one, it takes away any and all incentive for those kids to do well and work to change their lives while in custody. It is a punishment only, Clark-Rizzio described, when the juvenile system is supposed to be about rehabilitation. Under the law, no matter how hard a child works to better themselves and change, they can’t get out until their sentence is up. “Judges should be able to decide how much time a child needs to serve in order to be accountable and fully rehabilitated, and when it is safe to come home,” advocates the YJC.
The “Vitter sentences,” do not make communities safer, and may even increase recidivism, the YJC argues.
In addition, the sentences waste money, with Louisiana taxpayers spending more than $400,000 per child currently incarcerated under a Vitter sentence ($15.8 million total). If those sentences were reduced by just one year, the state would save $3.9 million.
The “misguided” law reflects a different time and a different mindset, Clark-Rizzio said. Today, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are getting much better at using “evidence-based practices that actually keep our communities safe,” he said. There are Vitter kids which the Office of Juvenile Justice would love to release, Clark-Rizzio described, kids they know don’t need to be in custody and would be much better served returning to their families, communities and schools. But they can’t under the 1993 law.
A third priority for the YJC is to ensure kids are safe while in custody. Currently there are no statewide standards to ensure the environments in which children are being held are safe, effective and rehabilitative.
A lack of standards leads to problematic practices like solitary confinement, which can be very damaging to children whose brains are still developing. It’s also cost-effective, avoiding lawsuits (such as the one that shut down the Tullulah Correctional Center), and “Children who are held in safe and effective facilities are less likely to reoffend when they return to their communities, which makes us safe and saves taxpayer dollars,” the YJC contends.
According to a 2014 report by the Southern Education Foundation looking at 15 southern states, “Based on available statistical data, children and youth in local juvenile justice programs in the South are making very limited progress in education. Only 28 percent of the juveniles 13 to 20 years old in local facilities earned a high school course credit in 2011.”
The report found just eight percent of incarcerated Louisiana youth earn high school credit in prison, compared to 36 percent for the South as a whole. And this despite spending about twice as much to incarcerate a child than to educate one in a public school.
Juvenile detention centers are mandated by law to provide children with an education.
According to the researchers: “The mission of juvenile justice systems must be redefined and reorganized with a fundamental purpose of education, if the systems are to be successful. Without profound transformation, there will be little or no justice for both the young individuals in custody, especially the young African-American males, and for society.”
The fourth agenda item deals with expungement laws.
Once they’ve served their time, juvenile court records can keep people trying to become productive citizens from pursuing educational and work opportunities, housing and military service.
If the focus of the juvenile justice system is rehabilitation, and giving kids who have made mistakes the chance to succeed – which is a more cost effective and safer approach for society as a whole – then, “without a straightforward expungement process in place, we undercut the very premise of the juvenile system,” argues the YJC.
Compared to the rest of the nation, Louisiana has made some great strides in some areas of juvenile justice reform, Clark-Rizzio said. In others, the state still has a long way to go. “Louisiana is not at the bottom as it is in so many other areas,” he said. “But it certainly is not at the top, either.”
Clark-Rizzio said he’s optimistic with the forward movement on making juvenile justice smarter, safer, more effective and more cost effective. But he also notes that any contact with the system can have a profoundly negative effect on the life of a child. Disconnecting children unnecessarily from their families, communities and schools can be devastating with lifelong consequences. And thus it is also important to take steps to keep kids out of the system if their offenses do not warrant incarceration – as well as address the ways the system disproportionately impacts the lives of African-American boys.
According to the Southern Education report, “almost two-thirds of the children and youth in the residential facilities of the juvenile justice systems in the nation and the South were confined for offenses and problems that in 2010 did not involve any wrongdoing directly against another person.”
But for those in the system, Clark-Rizzio emphasizes holding children accountable for their actions while providing the services and environment to give them the chance to succeed. And remembering they are not small adults – they are kids and must be treated differently.
“It’s so clear that while these kids have done bad things at one point, the kids are not irredeemable,” Clark-Rizzio said. “The only way they become irredeemable is to treat them like that.”
This article originally published in the March 13, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
