State legislators are considering a new sentencing bill for children who commit murder. The measure hurdles legal obstacles but ignores the spirit of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that banned mandatory life-without-parole sentences for crimes committed by juveniles.
More importantly, the proposal fails to take into account relevant findings from neuroscience research and the evolving recognition that a society that condemns its children to die in prison is neither a safe society nor a just society.
Consider, for example, unlike many of its neighbors, Pennsylvania has the nation's fourth largest death row, one of the largest contingents of prisoners serving life without parole and the most individuals convicted of murder as juveniles serving life without parole. Yet the murder rate in the Keystone State is considerably larger than New York, New Jersey and West Virginia — all of which have abolished the death penalty.
What we should have learned after years of addressing violence with violence is that we did nothing to make our communities safer. On the contrary, a case might be made that we actually encourage more violence in a quest for vengeance.
At the same time, we are a nation of laws and values. No one is suggesting that wrongdoing, especially crime as serious as murder, should go unchallenged But we are a civilized society with evolving standards and openness to scientific discoveries. Look at the difference DNA has made in our ability to administer justice.
In crafting our laws, legislators should be considering recent findings about the development of the human brain and how it does not reach full functioning until the mid-20s. This is an essential ingredient in reaching the high court's "basic precept of justice that punishment for crime should be graduated and proportioned to both the offender and the offense."
In writing for the majority in Miller v. Alabama, Justice Elena Kagan cited earlier decisions involving juveniles in capital cases and in nonhomicide cases: "We reasoned that those findings — of transient rashness, proclivity for risk and inability to assess consequences — both lessened a child's 'moral culpability' and enhanced the prospect that, as the years go by and neurological development occurs, his 'deficiencies will be reformed.' "
She added that those earlier cases "emphasized that the distinctive attributes of youth diminish the penological justifications for imposing the harshest sentences on juvenile offenders, even when they commit terrible crimes."
In the latest version of SB 850, which the House has amended, arbitrary age distinctions are drawn with sentences of life without parole or 35 years to life reserved for those 15 or older. Those younger than 15 get the option of life without parole or a minimum of 25 years to life.
The Prison Society testified at an earlier legislative hearing on this issue and proposed that the state establish a sentence of 10 years to life for all juveniles.
The thinking was that a decade would enable the individual to reach maturity and to show his or her readiness for release. Perhaps the minimum should be 15 years, but certainly not more than 20.
Most likely few, if any, would get approved at their minimum by the Parole Board. Nevertheless, the state would have control over them for life and could confine them until there was clear and convincing evidence that the person could be released without jeopardizing the community.
Some will say a minimum of 10 years, or even 20 years, is not enough time. Others will say life is not enough. But this is not a test to see how tough we can be. The way we develop our justice system is a measure of our civility.
We will be judged by the value we put on redemption, not retribution.
William DiMascio is executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society (www.prisonsociety.org).
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