2,000 Young Offenders Serving Life Terms in Jail [View All]

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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1012-02.htm

Published on Wednesday, October 12, 2005 by The Independent / UK

America Has 2,000 Young Offenders Serving Life Terms in Jail
by Andrew Gumbel

Two leading human rights organisations have accused the United States of in effect throwing away the lives of more than 2,000 juvenile offenders sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole - a punishment out of step with international law but one increasingly popular with tough-on-crime US legislators.

According to a report being published today by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the United States is the only country to punish juveniles so severely on a routine basis. They counted 2,225 child offenders locked up for life across 42 American states. In the rest of the world, they found only a dozen other cases, restricted to three countries - Israel, South Africa and Tanzania.

"Criminal punishment in the United States can serve four goals: rehabilitation, retribution, deterrence and incapacitation," the report concludes, and 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."

Some American states permit the imposition of a life sentence without parole to offenders as young as 10. The youngest actually serving such a sentence are 13. Roughly one-sixth of those locked up for life committed their offences when they were under 16. Almost 60 per cent were given their life sentence for their first offence.


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