Several thousand children have been growing up behind bars in America
Anita Colon was crying when she received the telephone call, but the caller knew hers were tears of joy. The caller was her brother dialing her from a prison in Pennsylvania,
where he is one of 480 persons serving a life-without-parole sentence
for a crime ending in homicide, committed while they were teens.
Pennsylvania prisons hold America’s largest number of teen lifers.
Colon’s brother, Robert Holbrook, called his sister less than one
hour after the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this week announced its ruling
outlawing mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles
convicted of homicide.
“I was choking back tears when he called, and he knew by my voice it had to be good,” Colon said.
Colon is the Pennsylvania Coordinator of the National Campaign for
Fair Sentencing of Youth, an organization opposed to juvenile life
without parole sentences, which were voided by America’s highest court
this week. The Supreme Court ruled that such sentencing violates the ban
on cruel and unusual punishment contained in the Eighth Amendment of
the U.S. Constitution.
America has an ugly distinction regarding its practice of placing teens in prison until they die.
America – a nation that prides itself on freedom – stands “alone in
the world” in its laws permitting the imposition of juvenile life
sentences with no option for parole, according to a report released by
the D.C.-based Sentencing Project.
Twenty-eight states and the federal system sentence juveniles to life
in prison without parole for homicides. There are over 2,500 such
juvenile lifers languishing in prisons around the nation.
While the Supreme Court’s ruling still permits life-without-parole
sentences for teens sentenced without mandatory provisions, Colon and
other activists still consider the ruling a significant step in the
right direction for persons who were sentenced to prison for decades for
crimes committed when they were basically children.
The oldest juvenile-sentenced-lifer in Pennsylvania’s prison system
is currently in his mid-70s. He received his sentence for murder in 1953
when he was just 15-years-old.
That man received his life-without-parole sentence for a crime
committed before he could legally drive, drink, vote, marry, enlist in
the military or even reason rationally, according to scientific evidence
about juvenile brain development now recognized by the U.S. Supreme
Court. The Justices utilized that evidence when they outlawed juvenile
mandatory life without parole, juvenile life for non-homicides and the
death penalty for juveniles.
Anita Colon became an activist on the issue of teen lifers following the conviction of her brother.
Holbrook received a mandatory life-without-parole sentence for
serving as a look-out on his 16th birthday for a drug-related 1990
robbery in Philadelphia that ended in a homicide. Holbrook didn’t commit
that murder.
“He was happy but cautiously optimistic about the Court’s ruling,” Colon said.
“He knows the fight for release is not over but the ruling is an
important victory. Now we have to fight for justice when courts and
parole boards start conducting the reviews resulting from the ruling.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling outlawing mandatory life without parole sentences is
the third in a series of rulings that have reversed hard-line legal and
court stances on teens that have meted out severe adult punishment to
juvenile offenders. In 2005 the High Court outlawed the death penalty
for juveniles. In 2009 it struck down juvenile life without parole for
offenses other than murder.
Conservative politicians and prosecutors champion life-without-parole
sentences for juveniles, contending teens who commit heinous crimes
must be held strictly accountable.
However, data indicates that many of the teens slammed with these
walking-death-sentence terms are not cold-blooded killers –- the type of
criminal projected as most deserving to die in prison.
In Pennsylvania approximately 26 percent of juvenile lifers did not
commit a homicide themselves –- receiving convictions under legal
measures mandating mandatory sentencing for anyone involved in a felony
murder irrespective of their level of participation in that crime.
Further, almost 60 percent of Pennsylvania’s juvenile lifers where
first-time offenders – not the habitual violent offenders normally
considered legitimate candidates for the medieval-style until-they-die
imprisonment.
Anita Colon said that many of the politicians and prosecutors she’s
talked with hold grave misconceptions about juvenile lifer laws. “Many of the legislators in Pennsylvania that I’ve talked to don’t
even understand that life in prison means spending the rest of your life
in prison. They’ve told me these sentences don’t exist,” Colon said. “Even many prosecutors say these sentences are only for the worst of the worst. But my brother was a first time offender.”
In Michigan, for example, which holds the nation’s second largest
teen lifer population at 350+, about half of those convictions were for
aiding and abetting murder, not committing the murder itself.
Given the pervasive race bias in America’s criminal justice system
it’s not surprising that most teen lifers are African-American.
“Two-thirds of Michigan’s juvenile lifers are African American,”
Detroit Free Press
columnist Jeff Gerritt wrote, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s
ruling. Gerritt criticized Michigan legislators for lacking the “courage
and compassion to strike down the state’s draconian juvenile lifer
law.”
In Pennsylvania, 70 percent of the juvenile lifers are African American and nine percent are Hispanic.
That percentage of black juvenile lifers in ennsylvania’s prison
system exceeds the percentage of black adult lifers (62%), according to
statistics compiled by Bradley Bridge, a lawyer for the Defender
Association of Philadelphia, who has litigated juvenile lifer cases
since 2005.
Over half of the state’s 480 juvenile lifers come from a single
jurisdiction: Philadelphia, the city/county that also sends the highest
percentage of people, again most of them Black, to Pennsuylvania’s death
row.
Philadelphia lawyer/writer David Love said too few people look at the
“reality” of incarceration costs of juvenile life sentences. Pennsylvania spends in excess of $15-million annually to incarcerate
its juvenile lifers. That dollar figure increases annually as young
inmates grow older, as a result of soaring costs for medical, security
and other services required for elderly inmates.
At one Pennsylvania state prison just the long-term care for infirm
elderly inmates costs $63,000 annually per inmate, over $30,000 more
than the annual cost for younger inmates.
Love, executive director of the Witness to Innocence Project, said,
“People were sold a bill of goods by politicians and prosecutors that we
have to be tough on crime. Now we have a confluence of hard economic
times and the failures of criminal justice system policies. States are
realizing they can’t afford to lock people up because that is taking
money from education and social welfare needs.”
The National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Lifers supports life
without parole laws stating there are “bad seeds” unfit to live outside
prison walls.
Activists like Anita Colon agree that some teen criminals deserve
harsh sentences, but say that others sentenced as teens deserve a second
chance denied to them by mandatory sentencing…at least an opportunity
to convince a judge or parole board that they’ve earned the opportunity
for a second chance. “I hope the end result [of the Supreme Court’s ruling] is a sentencing scheme that is more flexible and equitable,” Colon said.
“However people think about our justice system, it should operate to
allow judges to use their experience in sentencing taking into account
factors like culpability. Mandatory laws strip judges of their
discretion in sentencing.”
Colon’s brother, Robert Holbrook, wrote in a 2008 essay that “a child
offender” who makes a terrible decision as a youth receives less
“justice and leniency” than in countries like China and Libya.
“When the law preys on its child offenders…it is no better than the
criminal predators that prey on children in society,” Holbrook wrote.
