What to Know About the Supreme Court’s Decision on Life Sentences for Minors

Juvenile Law Center is a national public interest law firm. We advocate on behalf of kids in both the justice system and the child welfare system.

With respect to juvenile life without parole and other extreme sentencing, Juvenile Law Center has been involved as amici in all of the United States Supreme Court sentencing cases from Roper through Graham and Miller. We wrote briefs ... in support of the youth who were seeking to have the particular sentence ruled unconstitutional. We were also co-counsel in Montgomery v. Louisiana.

[The Supreme Court] made it a little bit easier going forward to impose life without parole on youthful defendants under the age of 18 who are convicted of homicide. It did not overrule the other Supreme Court cases of Miller or Montgomery prohibiting mandatory life without parole sentences.

In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Miller v. Alabama. And in that case, the challenge was to a mandatory life without parole sentence. The court ruled that mandatory life without parole sentences were unconstitutional. Jones came along in 2021, and it pulled back a little bit on what the Miller and Montgomery cases decided.

But it did not disrupt the underlying ruling, which was that it required only discretionary life without parole sentences in some specific circumstances. Miller, Montgomery and now Jones are limited to young people under the age of 18, convicted of homicide, who were facing these most extreme sentences — which are life without parole sentences.

We have an enormous amount of scientific research available to us now. And that research has taught us that kids have a unique capacity for change and also that the vast majority of youth who commit violations of the law will naturally stop offending generally in their mid to late 20s. And to me, that information is incredibly important when we think about what our justice policy should look like.

So if the reality is that most young people will stop committing crimes in their mid to late 20s, in my view, there's zero reason to continue to incarcerate them into their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s or longer — which is what we've done. And all of that incarceration serves literally no purpose except just revenge and retribution.

I think the other really important point to stress is how racialized our justice system is. Generally, Black people are roughly 15% of the American population. Their participation in the criminal justice system is anywhere between 40% and 60%. At certain stages in the system, those numbers are much higher.

The numbers of youth of color who are incarcerated tend to be higher — both pre-trial and after they have been convicted. So life without parole and any extreme sentencing is another way in which we disproportionately harm young people of color. And the only way that we can fix that is really to dramatically shake up the system. And that includes really eliminating these very extreme and harsh sentences for young people.

When I talk about shaking up the system, it really means shrinking it at every point. We should be arresting fewer kids. We should be diverting more youth out of the formal youth justice system. If they are going to be formally prosecuted, we should have more opportunities for community-based resources and treatment programs for these young people. We should abolish youth prisons. Youth prisons are harmful, traumatizing environments for young people and are more likely to do harm than to do good.

I can't say that it was surprising in the sense that the court has changed. We have three new justices on the Supreme Court, who weren't there in 2012 when Miller came down. We certainly knew that they were more conservative.

And I anticipated the possibility that they would view these rulings in a somewhat more narrow fashion. I think that we've made enormous strides in the last 15 years. And I think we have taken steps toward making our justice system more humane. But I want to be clear, we have a long way to go. And this didn't advance that. We did not take any new steps forward.

The United States operates a highly punitive justice system. And these extreme sentencing cases are all about kids who have been prosecuted and convicted in the adult criminal justice system.

Our criminal justice system, first and foremost, is about punishment and retribution. And this decision reflects that. We are unlike many of our peer nations around the world, for whom there is a higher priority placed on both rehabilitation and reintegration — bringing people back from prison successfully and productively into their communities.

For the U.S., it's not so much a priority. And I think that what we see in the Jones decision is a reflection of the justices who embrace that. It’s a reflection of the culture of our justice system — which is, for better or worse, today in 2021, very punitive.

Elections have consequences. I think they need to get out and vote because we live in a very politically charged time. Right now, the country is polarized and progressives are on one side and non-progressives are on the other side.

And the three conservative justices that sit on the U.S. Supreme Court right now are there because of political decisions that were made. If we share a vision — not just about what we want our justice system to look like, but frankly, our society to look like — we need to vote. We need to vote for the people who share that vision.