PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Rosie McNamara-Jones (215) 850-0412

archaic laws make pennsylvania

worst in world for SENTENCING KIDS TO life IN PRISON

Harrisburg, PA (September 22, 2008) – National experts in adolescent development and juvenile law provide testimony today that could affect Pennsylvania’s current juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) laws. Senator Stewart Greenleaf called for hearings after Human Rights Watch reported that the United States accounts for 100% percent of all JLWOP sentences world-wide, and Pennsylvania has the dubious distinction of having more youth serving JLWOP than any other state – over 450.

Juvenile Law Center is calling on legislators to abolish mandatory JLWOP sentencing, and give judges, juries and parole boards the discretion to assess youths’ blameworthiness and punish accordingly. Some of the children serving these sentences committed horrific crimes. But others were not the primary actors in their crimes or they were sentenced under felony-murder statutes, which mean that they did not intend to kill anyone, but that someone was killed during the commission of a less serious crime. Juveniles who commit crimes can still be held responsible for their behavior, punished for their offenses, and treated in a way that protects the community – all of which can be accomplished without the outdated, one-size-fits-all JLWOP policy.

“This is not about being soft or tough on crime. These are false dichotomies,” says Robert Schwartz, Executive Director at Juvenile Law Center. “Pennsylvania’s current JLWOP law does nothing to increase public protection, is not supported by the research into adolescent development, and violates international human rights law.”

Research has proven that these mandated policies are not only ineffective public safety measures, but they are incredibly costly and do nothing to deter other youth from committing similar acts. Additionally, numerous studies, including several by the National Institutes of Health, show that adolescents and children are often excellent candidates for rehabilitation due to their still-developing frontal lobes where executive functioning such as planning, impulse control and reasoning takes place. Brain development research shows that adolescents are inherently less able than adults to control themselves, to resist peer pressure, or to think ahead.

“Studies show that more than 90 percent of adolescents who commit crimes – even very serious crimes – cease their criminal behavior by the time adolescence has ended; and virtually all offenders, even those whose criminal behavior persists into early adulthood, desist from crime by the time they are 30,” says Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D., Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at Temple University and former Director of the MacArthur Foundation’s Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice Research Network . “So holding a juvenile in prison beyond his 30^th birthday, at a cost of between $50,000 and $100,000 per year, doesn’t make a lot of fiscal sense.”

Juvenile Law Center is a national, non-profit, public interest law firm that advances and protects the rights and well-being of children in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Juvenile Law Center is a resource for other legal advocacy groups across the nation and is one of eight organizations around the world to receive the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Creative and Effective Institutions Award. For more information about Juvenile Law Center, visit www.jlc.org.

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