By Pedro Carneiro, Sarah Cattan, Gabriella Conti, Claire Crawford, Elaine Drayton, Christine Farquharson, Nick Ridpath    

Introduced in 1999, Sure Start was an ambitious, large-scale early years programme in England aimed at improving the life chances of children, particularly those growing up in poverty. The programme’s reach peaked in the late 2000s, with a network of around 3,300 centres operating as ‘one-stop shops’ for families with children under 5. Sure Start centres offered a wide range of services, from baby weighing clinics to childcare provision to employment support for parents. These services were designed primarily to target school readiness and children’s health, and recent evidence suggests the programme was successful in achieving these aims: in a series of reports, Cattan et al. (2022) and Carneiro et al. (2024a) document positive impacts of Sure Start for child health and school attainment, particularly for children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.    Given the efficacy of the Sure Start programme for health and educational outcomes, a natural question is whether it had broader impacts on children. This report details the findings from a robust evaluation of the impact of access to Sure Start on children’s absence and suspensions at school, youth offending and contacts with the children’s social care system. Missing school, committing a crime or experiencing social services involvement can entail significant welfare costs for children. There is a case that investment in joined-up services and early intervention can prevent children from experiencing these poor outcomes. For instance, the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care (MacAlister, 2022) highlighted the potential of tailored services based in community settings to contribute to earlier identification of families in need and reduce social services intervention. It is important to understand whether an integrated early years programme delivered in local neighbourhoods, such as Sure Start, was able to influence the need for costlier interventions, such as those delivered through children’s social care and the youth justice 

Key Findings

1. Access to a nearby Sure Start centre between ages 0 and 4 significantly reduced youth crime that resulted in convictions or custodial sentences. Living within 2.5 kilometres of a Sure Start centre reduced the share of 16-year-olds who had ever received a criminal conviction by 13%. Meanwhile, custodial sentences – the most severe sanction – fell by a fifth due to access to Sure Start. Reductions in youth offending were concentrated on convictions for theft, the most common category of offence (20% reduction), and for drug offences (20% reduction).2. While access to Sure Start reduced serious youth crime, it had more mixed impacts on less severe contact with the criminal justice system. Those with access to Sure Start committed offences earlier – a 10% increase in less serious misdemeanours by age 12 – and saw rises in cautions for criminal damage and violent crime, although overall numbers of young people experiencing cautions by age 16 were unchanged.  3. Misbehaviour also increased within school settings: the proportion of children suspended from secondary school increased by 10%, and absence rates increased by 7%. Part of the increase in poor behaviour, both in schools and for younger adolescents in the criminal justice system, may reflect a diversion of children away from more severe offences towards lower-level infractions, but it also likely represents an increase in misbehaviour for some children. This could align with evidence that group-based childcare, a key component of Sure Start’s services, can adversely affect the behavioural development of some children.4. Access to Sure Start had no significant effect on referrals to children’s social services or on receiving support as a child in need (CIN) or as a child looked after (CLA) between ages 7 and 16. Children in care during late primary school (age 7 to 11) did spend around 13% less time being looked after if they had access to Sure Start during their first five years of life, potentially indicating that children’s needs were somewhat less severe or that they benefited more quickly from support from social services. 5. The youth justice system and children’s social care involve significant costs for government, as well as the individuals involved. We estimate that for every pound spent at its peak in 2010, Sure Start averted approximately 19 pence in public spending on youth justice and children’s social care, equivalent to £500 million (in today’s prices) of savings per cohort attending at the time. Savings mostly come from costs of youth custody and children looked after, reflecting the high costs of these intensive interventions (and so the large financial benefits of reducing need for these institutions). Future work will provide an overall cost–benefit analysis of the programme, incorporating the effects on educational achievement and health identified in our previous work, while taking account of how these different domains relate to one another to avoid double-counting benefits.

IFS Report R338 London: The Institute for Fiscal Studies, October 2024, 75p.

By the National Autistic Society (UK)

Autistic people, like anyone else, can sometimes come into contact with the criminal justice system.  Our new report illustrates how a lack of support for young autistic people, both before entering and within the system, can have profoundly negative consequences on future life chances.  The experiences of people in our report illustrate clearly what changes need to happen, reaffirming recommendations we have been calling and campaigning for.

Preventative support is needed for autistic young people at risk 

•  The average age range for early concerns for both autistic adults and parent/carers is 13-15 years 

• Many autistic respondents had not had their autism diagnosis until adulthood, whereas most relatives of parent/carers were diagnosed at primary school age

• 75% of autistic adults and 86% of parent/carers reported that they had been visited at least once by the police 

The top early concerns for parent/carers and professionals were being easily led or influenced by peers, violence or aggression toward others, damage to property or fire setting and being excluded from school. 

Failings in understanding and support from schools, statutory services, healthcare and the criminal justice system have also been defining factors, as illustrated from the following case study:

“For 18 months, I had been suffering from severe suicidal ideation...The GP still did nothing… so I tried other ways of getting help and therapy, but that had led to nowhere because waiting lists were so phenomenally long, so I committed the index offence in the context of trying to draw attention to my plight and need.”

More support is needed for autistic young people in the criminal justice system

• 71% of criminal justice professionals believe processes for identifying autistic offenders are ineffective or only effective in a minority of cases 

• 64% of professionals (from a variety of sectors) only occasionally or rarely get the support they need to support autistic people 

• Up to 54% of relatives of parent/carers disclose their autism diagnosis, whereas up to 47% of autistic adults did not have an autism diagnosis to disclose when first involved with the justice system

In most cases both autistic adults and parent/carers received no reasonable adjustments from all sections of the criminal justice system. When they were put in place, adjustments that were common when being interviewed by police were use of an appropriate adult and clear language when questioning. In court the most common adjustments were assessment by a psychologist or psychiatrist and being told in advance what to expect. For professionals in our sample, the main barriers to implementing reasonable adjustments were lack of awareness and understanding of autism and effective identification processes. To address this both the survey and interviews have highlighted the need to develop consistent infrastructure for identifying, diagnostic referral routes and more efficient sharing of information between internal and external agencies. 

Some of our top recommendations 

Our research findings reaffirm recommendations made by our charity in the past, as well as the All Party Parliamentary Group on Autism (APPGA) and the HM Inspectorates of Prisons and Probation services report in regards to awareness and support, which can be summarised as:

• Mandatory autism training across all sections of the criminal justice system and other sectors such as schools and health & social care services 

• Improved access to post diagnostic support and low-level support which can tackle early concerns of young autistic people

• Accreditation, quality assurance and monitoring of autism best practice across services 

• Improved access to specialist resources and key services for professionals when supporting, screening or referring for diagnosis.

• Improved awareness on what reasonable adjustments can be used and how to implement them within all criminal justice sectors 

• Access to best practice teams and autism champions

Clare Hughes, Criminal Justice Manager at the National Autistic Society, said: “No autistic child or young person should be at greater risk of being in the criminal justice system just because they are autistic. But our research shows the impact can be devastating when it happens.

“There needs to be better understanding of autism and support for autistic young people in every part of the system. The right early support must also be available to stop autistic young people from entering the system in the first place, including mental health support to navigate what can feel like a chaotic and overwhelming world.

“Staff working in the criminal justice system must be supported to understand what autism is and how to meet autistic young people’s needs. Autistic young people have already been failed by entering the system in the first place, there is no excuse to fail them further.

“We’ve been calling for many of these recommendations for years. Government must act now, once and for all, to ensure that autistic young people in the justice system are not forgotten.”

Laurie Hunte, Criminal Justice Programme Manager at Barrow Cadbury Trust/T2A (Transition to Adulthood), said:  

 “I welcome this new report from National Autistic Society focusing on autistic young people and the criminal justice system. It reveals how autistic young people need a distinct approach both to recognise the difficulties of their transition into adulthood, but also to support their needs as autistic young people in the Criminal Justice System.

The report highlights how a failure to diagnose autism early on means a young person is more likely to get involved with the criminal justice system, a system which is not geared up to support young autistic people.” 

London: National Autistic Society, 2022. 41p.

By Spark Inside

We believe that well-being support for young men in prison — particularly for young Black men — should be prioritized and should be tailored to meet their specific needs.

Why is this important?

Young people in prison have untapped potential but have different needs from older people in prison, and are less likely to be able to access the support they need to flourish and build new lives. In addition, psychological maturity is essential for young people’s success in and after prison. Therefore, we know that young people in prison have distinct needs that must be met to enable effective rehabilitation. Furthermore, we know that young Black men, who are over-represented in the prison system, face further barriers to their rehabilitation. This is due to their experiences of social and economic inequalities, institutional racism, and a lack of services that take into account different cultures and Black identity. Black men in prison suffer from worse outcomes and experiences than white prisoners. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated many of the challenges facing young people in prison, but with proper support from specialists working in prisons, young people make positive choices that lead to better rehabilitative outcomes and improved wellbeing, including better physical, mental and social health.

The call to action

The Being Well Being Equal campaign is calling for urgent action from the Government, prison policy-makers and practitioners to:

• Prioritise wellbeing services in prisons for young men and young Black men;

• Tailor wellbeing services to take into account and meet the specific needs of young men in prison and young Black men in prison;

• Provide better support and guidance for professionals in prison working with and caring for young men and young Black men.

The report presents a consolidation of the research, policy, and practice concerned with the wellbeing of young men in custody, as well as insight from expert organizations and, most importantly, young men themselves. It is hoped, that by bringing together the evidence, this report will enable practitioners, policymakers, and commissioners to have a more informed understanding of how to promote Being Well and Being Equal amongst young men in custody. Practice examples throughout the report provide tangible solutions to meeting the needs of young men, developed by voluntary sector organizations that bring significant knowledge, skills, and experience. Young adults make up 15% of the prison population, (around 12,000 individuals), with 18-20 year-olds representing the highest level of Black and ethnic minority over-representation in the adult prison estate.Prison population projections suggest that there will be a 50% increase in the number of 18 to 20 year olds in custody between 2021 and 20264 . The Health Foundation states ‘the health of a country’s young people is one of the greatest assets it holds’5 and yet for the 0.4% of young adults in prison in England and Wales, their distinct wellbeing needs are often overlooked. Well-being, as defined by the Department of Health, is ‘about feeling good and functioning well and comprises an individual’s experience of their life and a comparison of life circumstances with social norms and values’. Repeat evidence presented by HM Inspectorate (2021), the Justice Select Committee (2016), and the Harris Review (2015) demonstrates that young adult well-being in the prison system is significantly poorer than for older prisoners – with more negative experiences of relationships, physical environments, mental health and safety. This experience is often exacerbated for Black and minority ethnic prisoners with fewer feeling safe, supported, or respected. Alongside the fundamental difference in cognitive maturity between adult men and young adult men, 18-25-year-olds in custody represent some of the most vulnerable individuals in our communities. They account for 22% of incidences of self-harm in the prison estate8 and are more likely to have experienced poverty, childhood trauma, and being in care than the general population. In addition, young Black men experience the social, emotional, economic, and structural impact of racism. While in custody there is an opportunity to ensure that young men have access to the support they need to flourish and build new lives. In order to unlock their potential and improve their well-being, prison policy, practice, and commissioning must differentiate between the needs of 18-25-year-olds and the older prison population. There are only three distinct young adult establishments in England and Wales with a total operating capacity of around 1000. Almost 90% of young adults reside in the wider adult estate where HM Inspectorate of Prisons has found little differentiation between meeting the needs of 18-25-year-olds and older prisoners  

London: Spark Inside, 2023. 73p.

By Peggy Nicholson

In many respects, the evolution of juvenile court reform and school discipline reform follow similar trajectories. This Article begins by tracking those respective evolutions. Part I outlines the evolution of the juvenile court system in the United States and focuses on the fledgling system’s distinction of children from adults and its “rehabilitative ideal” that children could outgrow challenging behavior if given the right treatment and services. After a long period of “adultification” of the juvenile court in response to rising crime rates, more recent reform efforts have focused on returning to the early court’s rehabilitative model, including policies that would keep young children out of juvenile court altogether. With the context of the juvenile court’s evolution in mind, Part II tracks the history of exclusionary school discipline, which is defined as any school disciplinary action, typically a suspension or expulsion, that removes a student from his or her typical education setting. Many of the same rationales for the “adultification” of the juvenile court, including the myth of the juvenile superpredator and the rise of a zero-tolerance approach to discipline, led to a sharp increase in the use of exclusionary discipline throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. However, with a growing body of research showing the harm and inefficacy of exclusionary discipline, advocates for discipline reform have pushed to decrease its use, which has included proposals to ban or limit exclusionary discipline for young students. The efforts to protect young children from both juvenile court intervention and exclusionary discipline are explored respectively in Parts III and IV. Part III describes the movement to “Raise the Minimum Age” of juvenile court jurisdiction as an avenue to bar court processing for young children. Notably, Part III outlines the variety of rationales that have been used to support raising the minimum age and charts the success of the movement in the last decade. Against this backdrop, Part IV turns to the movement to end exclusionary discipline for young children. Although important differences between the juvenile court and school discipline exist, many of the same rationales that support keeping young children out of juvenile court also apply to protecting young children from exclusionary discipline. Despite these similar rationales, which are explored in Part IV, the movement to end exclusionary discipline for young children has had less success, with fewer states adopting these measures. Further, most states that have passed laws limiting school exclusion for young students still allow exclusions to move forward in many circumstances. Part IV tracks existing statewide efforts to limit exclusionary discipline for young children and describes some of the challenges faced by these reform efforts. Despite the challenges, there are also opportunities. Part V highlights lessons learned from the “Raise the Minimum Age” movement to make recommendations for building momentum for states to end exclusionary discipline for young children. Given the willingness in many states to protect young children from juvenile court intervention, there is hope that similar arguments and advocacy strategies can be utilized to advance statewide policies that will protect those same young children from the harm of exclusionary discipline.

11 Belmont Law Review 334-383 (2024)

By  Brendan Lantz, and Kyle G. Knapp

The analysis, entitled, Trends in Juvenile Offending: What You Need to Know, focuses on trends in offending from 2016 through 2022 by examining changes in the frequency of juvenile offending by crime type, demographics, and several other characteristics. This study uses incident information from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) from 2016 to 2022. The study period begins in 2016 because of notable increases in agency participation in reporting crime statistics to NIBRS following 2015; it ends in 2022 because that was the most recent year of data available at the time the report was prepared. To produce these data, offense, victim, and offender segment-level information was aggregated to the incident level for each year. The year files were then appended into a master incident-level file, in which incidents were restricted to those (a) involving at least one juvenile offender; and (b) from agencies that reported to NIBRS each month during the study period. From this file, totals were created for each month in every year. Some totals represent the total number of offender participations, while other totals represent the total number of incidents with one or more characteristics of interest. The outline below walks through each segment of NIBRS, how information was aggregated, how cases were dropped, and how totals were generated. 

2024. 20p.

By Paul Pazen and Steven L. Byers

People in Colorado have not directly experienced crime. From property offenses to violent crimes, every crime leaves a traumatized victim. Whether the wounds are physical, psychological, or financial, it is important to acknowledge the profound effects that a crime can have on its victims. At Common Sense Institute, our goal is to address the economic impact of crime while remaining conscious of the suffering that it causes. This report analyzes the cost of juvenile crime in Colorado and its economic impact. This study encompasses the period of 2010 to 2023 and the data comes from Colorado Crime Statistics (2023). Colorado’s juvenile crime trends tell a mixed story. On the one hand, youth crime rates have fallen in the last 15 years as property crime rates fall, follow. On the other hand, violent youth crime has risen. Meanwhile, the number of juveniles arrested and detained has fallen from a combination of alternative sentencing, diversion programs, and increased parole. It is violent crime that costs more. Juvenile crime results in direct or tangible costs including unrecovered stolen property, damaged property, victims’ out-of-pocket medical expenses, the cost of police, courts and correctional institutions, and lost earnings by both victims and juvenile perpetrators who are arrested and convicted. Juvenile crime also inflicts indirect or intangible costs like the pain and suffering of victims, reduced quality of life for everyone, and lower levels of investment and lower property values.i Intangible costs are difficult to measure with precision but, among those who have estimated them, there is a consensus that the intangible cost of juvenile crime far exceeds the tangible cost. Reducing current rates of murder, rape, assault, theft, and robbery by juveniles would produce a wide range of savings and other benefits to families, individuals, property owners and taxpayers. All estimates of the cost of crime in this report are adjusted for inflation and are reported in 2020 dollars so that costs can be compared across years. In 2021, after an extraordinary rise in crime, CSI estimated a total cost of crime of $3.3 billion. 

Greenwood Village, CO: Common Sense Institute, 2024. 30p.

By Western Australia Corruption and Crime Commission

In the early hours of 12 October 2023, a 16-year-old First Nation's boy, Cleveland Keith Dodd - died in custody. He was found hanging from a damaged vent in the ceiling of his cell at Unit 18 in Casuarina Prison. Cleveland's death comes some 32 years after the conclusion of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. The painful truth is that he is by no means the first Indigenous Australian to have died in custody in Western Australia since that time. The profound tragedy is that he is the first child. While the cause and manner of Cleveland's death have not yet been determined by the Coroner, the Commission is satisfied within its jurisdiction that Cleveland fixed a torn piece of t-shirt material to a damaged ceiling vent, the ligature point from which he was later found hanging. At 01:35 on 12 October 2023, Cleveland used his cell call to contact a Youth Custodial Officer to tell him of his intention to hang himself -shortly before doing so. Cleveland's final threat of self-harm was one of at least 17 threats of self-harm or self-harm attempts made by the young people detainees at Unit 18 in the 24 hours leading up to it. Why Cleveland was driven to self-harm is not an inquiry within the jurisdiction of the Commission. The question of how he was able to attempt to take his own life in a tightly controlled space - is. There are several bodies vested with statutory power to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of a child in custody. That is for good reason. The death of a child in such circumstances deeply affects not only their family but the Western Australian community as a whole. Broader systemic and cultural issues within the Department of Justice (DOJ) may have contributed to this outcome. In his May 2023 Inspection of Banksia Hill Detention Centre and Unit 18, the Inspector of Custodial Services Mr Eamon Ryan found young people, staff, and a physical environment in acute crisis. In the almost 18 months leading up to his inspection, the rates of self-harm and attempted suicide among young people in custody were unprecedently high. Staffing was in terminal decline. These wider considerations may form part of the Coronial inquest into Cleveland's death or the inquiries of the other authorities. The Commission has a narrow but important jurisdiction. Until 2014 the Commission also had jurisdiction in respect of public officers who engage in conduct that constitutes or involves a breach of the trust placed in the public officer by reason of his or her office of employment as a public officer and could constitute a disciplinary offence providing reasonable grounds for termination of employment. In 2014 Parliament removed that jurisdiction from the Commission and vested it in the Public Sector Commission. Therefore, acts of neglect or misfeasance which do not disclose a possible offence of 2 or more years' imprisonment are outside the Commission's jurisdiction. The Commission is empowered to investigate serious misconduct. Serious misconduct is defined in the Corruption, Crime and Misconduct Act 2003 (CCM Act) s 4. To constitute serious misconduct under s 4(a) or (b), a public officer must have acted or failed to act corruptly. Corruption has been held to include conduct that involves moral impropriety in public administration, or some perversion of the proper performance of the duties of office.1 There was no evidence giving rise to a reasonable suspicion that any public officer had engaged in conduct of that kind. As a result, the Commission concentrated on investigating whether any public officer may have engaged in serious misconduct under s 4(c), by committing an offence punishable by 2 or more years' imprisonment while acting or purporting to act in his or her official capacity. The scope of the Commission's investigation was limited to forming opinions asto whether any public officer committed an offence punishable by 2 or more years' imprisonment. The purpose of the investigation was to determine whether any public officers engaged in conduct of that kind in the execution of their duties at Unit 18 at Casuarina Prison from 10 to 12 October 2023. On 12 October 2023, the DOJ notified the Commission of Cleveland's critical incident.2 After assessing the matter, on 20 October 2023 the Commission formed Operation Lowestoft to investigate. The same day, the Commission took the unusual step of making a public announcement in relation to the investigation, given the extensive reporting, public interest and the seriousness of the incident. On 2 November 2023, a member of Cleveland's family made a report directly to the Commission.3 The Commission's inquiry focused on the actions of the five DOJ Youth Custodial Officers (YCOs) and one nurse contracted to the DOJ who worked the night shift during which Cleveland self-harmed. A significant amount of CCTV footage and a large volume of records were obtained. Interviews with witnesses were conducted. The DOJ fully cooperated with the Commission's investigation. All five YCOs and the Nurse were examined under oath or affirmation between 29 January and 2 February 2023. Between 5 and 8 February 2023, the Unit Manager of the day shift at Unit 18 on 11 October 2023, the Superintendent of Unit 18, Mr Douglas Coyne, and the Deputy Commissioner for Women, Ms Christine Ginbey, who was at the time the Deputy Commissioner for Women and Young People, were examined under oath or affirmation. Having carefully weighed the benefits of public exposure and public awareness against the potential for prejudice or privacy infringements, the Commissioner did not determine that it was in the public interest to open those examinations to the public. Nonetheless, the Commission considered that there was a strong public interest in the Commission investigating the persons present at Unit 18 on 11 and 12 October 2023, and those who supervised them. Under their watch - a boy died. The Commission's mandate was to investigate and expose any possible serious misconduct by those who may have played a part in it. The criminal offences that the Commission's investigation centred around were those of the falsification of a record by a public officer contrary to the Criminal Code s 85, an act or omission causing bodily harm or danger under the Criminal Code s 304 (arising by way of a breach of the duty to provide the necessaries of life under the Criminal Code s 262) and failing to protect a child from harm pursuant to the Children and Community Services Act 2004 (CCS Act) s 101. The Commission analysed the information gathered by the investigation. The Commission assessed the evidence of all the witnesses who gave evidence. In the Commission's opinion each of the witnesses was genuinely affected by Cleveland's death. There were undoubtedly breaches of DOJ procedures and policies that occurred on the night of Cleveland's self-harm. There may have been conduct engaged in that constitutes misfeasance or misconduct of another kind described in the CCM Act s 4(d). That is a matter about which the Commission has no jurisdiction to form an opinion. While Cleveland's death is plainly a devastating outcome of the events that occurred between 10 and 12 October 2023, in the Commission's assessment, there is no evidence to suggest that the public officers involved committed an offence punishable by 2 or more years' imprisonment in the execution of their duties at Unit 18 during that time. Consequently, the Commission has formed no opinions of serious misconduct.   

Northbridge, WA: The Commission, 2024. 70p.

By Colleen Sbeglia, Cortney Simmons, Grace Icenogle, Marsha Levick, Monica Peniche, Jordan Beardslee, Elizabeth Cauffman

In Miller v. Alabama (2012), the Supreme Court abolished mandatory juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentences and subsequently decided that the ruling applied retroactively (Montgomery v. Louisiana, 2016), effectively rendering thousands of inmates eligible for resentencing and potential release from prison. In its decisions, the Court cited developmental science, noting that youth, by virtue of their transient immaturity, are less culpable and more amenable to rehabilitation relative to their adult counterparts. Specifically, the Court notes adolescents' propensity for impulsive action, sensitivity to social influence, and difficulty understanding long-term consequences. Even so, these rulings raised concerns regarding the consequences of releasing prisoners who had committed heinous crimes as juveniles. Several years after the Court's decision, preliminary data are now available to shed light on rates of recidivism among those released. The current paper comprises three goals. First, we discuss the science of adolescent development and how it intersects with legal practice, contextualizing the Court's decision. Second, we present recidivism data from a sample of individuals formerly sentenced to JLWOP in Pennsylvania who were resentenced and released under Miller and Montgomery (N = 287). Results indicate that 15 individuals received new criminal charges up to 7 years postrelease (5.2%), the majority of which were nonviolent offenses. This low rate of recidivism is consistent with the developmental science documenting compromised decision-making during the adolescent years, followed by desistance from criminal behavior in adulthood. Lastly, we discuss the importance of interdisciplinary collaborations between researchers and legal practitioners, as well as critical future avenues of research in this area.

Journal of Research on Adolescence, 00, 1–11. 2024.  

By Ashley Nellis and Devyn Brown

A wave of reforms since 2010 has changed the trajectory of punishment for young people by substantially limiting the use of juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentences. At the sentence’s height of prominence in 2012, more than 2,900 people were serving JLWOP, which provided no avenue for review or release. Since reforms began, most sentence recipients have at least been afforded meaningful opportunity for a parole or sentence review. More than 1,000 have come home. This progress is remarkable, yet thousands more who have been sentenced to similarly extreme punishments as youth have not been awarded the same opportunity. Our analysis shows that in 2020, prisons held over 8,600 people sentenced for crimes committed when they were under 18 who were serving either life with the possibility of parole (LWP) or “virtual” life sentences of 50 years or longer. This brief argues for extending the sentencing relief available in JLWOP cases to those serving other forms of life imprisonment for crimes committed in their youth. In addition, The Sentencing Project has estimated that nearly two in five people sentenced to life without parole (LWOP) were 25 or younger at the time of their crime. These emerging adults, too, deserve a meaningful opportunity for a second look because their developmental similarities with younger people reduce their culpability in criminal conduct. The evidence provided in this brief supports bold reforms for youth and emerging adults sentenced to extreme punishments.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2024. 10p.