By The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth (CFSY)

For over 12 years, hundreds of individuals serving juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) have not received a second look at their sentences despite mandates from the United States Supreme Court limiting the practice and requiring new sentencing procedures for youth. Twenty-two states still legally allow JLWOP and what's worse, certain outlier states are increasing their incarcerated populations of children serving the sentence. These concerns become even more alarming when contextualized in the broader picture. As outlined in this report, the imposition of juvenile life without parole is not only becoming increasingly unusual nationally but also more unequal. In the past 12 years, we've seen an overall 85% decrease in the population of those serving these sentences, while the number of states banning JLWOP has increased by over 800%. However, despite these positive shifts, the percentage of Black children serving juvenile life without parole has risen significantly – from 60% historically to nearly 80% today. The continued legality of life without parole for youth also further enables the legal system to sentence children to other extreme terms. For instance, JLWOP sentences can be used as bargaining chips in plea deals, resulting in children receiving lengthy terms of years or de facto life sentences with minimal chance of parole. Furthermore, in a context where JLWOP is an option, sentencing a child to 20 years may be more accepted despite the fact that this exceeds the maximum sentence for adults in many countries around the world. As this report details, the use of JLWOP is increasingly unusual and increasingly unequal. And when contextualized in these trends, its persistence in outlier states is exceedingly unacceptable. The more unusual and unequal it is to sentence a child to life without parole nationally; the worse outlier states fare when held up to globally accepted standards of decency for our youth. Taken together, the need to address the unfinished business of ending juvenile life without parole is urgent. 

Washington, DC: CFSY, 2024. 13p

By Suzanne Mooney, Stephen Coulter, Lisa Bunting and DLorna Montgomery

This paper is drawn from an original report (Mooney et al., 2019) commissioned by the Safeguarding Board Northern Ireland as part of a cross-departmental initiative to support the development of trauma-informed practice in Northern Ireland. The original report used the ‘Sequential Intercept Model’ or SIM as a framework to undertake a selective review of practice innovations at different stages of the justice process as a means to consider how to divert young people and adults with complex needs from the criminal justice system (CJS) . Awareness of the SIM had emerged from a rapid evidence review which had summarised the evidence relating to the implementation of trauma-informed practice across multiple systems and settings (child welfare, health, education), including justice (see Bunting et al., 2018a-e; Bunting et al., 2019). International recognition of the strong connections between a trauma history and involvement with the justice system (Bellis et al., 2015), continued traumatic experiences within the justice system (Kubiak et al., 2017), and the relationship between harsh punishments and continued offending (Ko et al., 2008) has led to the adoption of trauma-informed approaches in secure settings both internationally and in the UK (e.g. D’Souza et al., 2021). Although not specifically named by its developers as a trauma-informed approach, the SIM was identified as a promising framework promoted by the US federal government Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration Agency (SAMHSA), highlighting opportunities to implement community-based intervention for justice-involved individuals suffering mental ill health and/or substance use as a means of minimising CJS involvement (Munetz and Griffin, 2006, p.320). It is argued that such diversion has the potential to reduce costs to society and deliver appropriate services without increasing the risk to public safety (Heilbrun et al., 2015). Justice-involved persons with complex needs It is well established in international literature that young people and adults involved with the justice system are disproportionately affected by adversity and trauma (Miller et al., 2011), with exposure to childhood adversity identified as a key risk factor for subsequent justice involvement (Kerig and Becker, 2010; Bellis et al., 2015). UK research indicates the scale of the increased risk with population-based adverse childhood experience (ACE) surveys demonstrating that English adults exposed to four or more ACEs were 11 times more likely to be imprisoned at some time in their lives (Bellis et al., 2014) while Welsh adults experienced a 20 times greater likelihood in comparison to adults with no ACEs (Bellis et al., 2015). More recently, research in Manchester found that justice-involved children typically had multiple ACEs (see Academic Insights paper 2021/13 by Gray, Smithson and Jump). The complex links between health, social inequality and crime are also increasingly recognised (for example Public Health England, 2018) with justice-involved persons known to suffer significantly worse health than the general population and more likely to be the victims of crime (Anders et al., 2017). Although much of the US SIM literature refers specifically to people impacted by ‘mental health and substance use disorders’, this paper uses the overarching term of persons with ‘complex needs’ to better capture the range of adversities common in justice-involved young people and adults. These include: different forms of abuse; family breakdown and care experience; domestic violence; homelessness; lack of education and employment; as well as mental ill health and substance use problems (see Table 1). UK policy developments have recognised these challenges with adult and youth justice processes striving to take account of these intersecting influences on offending behaviour and promote cross-sector partnership to enable upstream intervention to prevent or mitigate the underlying causes of offending (see, for example, Public Health England, 2018; Department of Health and Department of Justice, 2019).

Academic Insights 2024/01, Manchester, UK: HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2024. 17p.