New Heritage Foundation report defending juve LWOP sentences

I just learned of a timely new report released this past week by The Heritage Foundation on the topic of life sentences for certain juvenile offenders. The report, which is available at this link, is titled "Adult Times for Adult Crimes: Life Without Parole for Juvenile Killers and Violent Teens," and is authored by Charles Stimson and Andrew Grossman.  As its title suggests, this lengthy report reads like an amicus brief in support of states seeking to defend the use of LWOP for juve offenders in the upcoming SCOTUS cases Graham and Sullivan.

The report has an executive summary that starts this way:

Life without parole for the very worst juvenile offenders is reasonable, constitutional, and (appropriately) rare.  In response to the Western world’s worst juvenile crime problem, U.S. legislators have enacted commonsense measures to protect their citizens and hold these dangerous criminals accountable. Forty-three states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government have set the maximum punishment for juvenile offenders at life without the possibility of parole.  By the numbers, support for its use is overwhelming.

Nonetheless, its continued viability is at risk from misleading lobbying efforts in many states and court cases that seek to substitute international law for legislative judgments and constitutional text.

Emboldened by the Supreme Court’s Roper v. Simmons decision, which relied on the Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishments” language to prohibit capital sentences for juveniles, anti-incarceration activists have set about extending the result of Roper to life without parole.  If they succeed, an important tool of criminal punishment will be eliminated, and all criminal sentences could be subjected to second-guessing by judges, just as they are in capital punishment cases today.

The most visible aspects of this campaign are a number of self-published reports and “studies” featuring photographs of young children and litigation attacking the constitutionality of life without parole for juvenile offenders — including two cases that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear in its 2009 term.

Because the activists have monopolized the debate over life without parole, legislatures, courts, the media, and the public have been misled on crucial points.  For example, dozens of newspaper articles, television reports, and court briefs have echoed the activists’ assertion that 2,225 juvenile offenders are serving LWOP sentences in the United States, despite that this figure is nothing more than a manufactured statistic.  This report is an effort to set the record straight. It provides reliable facts and analysis, as well as detailed case studies, with full citations to primary sources.

Other recent posts on juve LWOP and the Graham and Sullivan cases:

• "A Life Term for Rape at 13: Cruel and Unusual?"
• NYTimes coverage of very young lifers
• Does Roper suggest young juve LWOP is unconstitutional?
• Juves serving life terms
• The next issue in sentencing of juveniles?
• New HRW report assailing juve LWOP in California
• LDF report documents disparities in juve LWOP in Mississippi
• SCOTUS grants cert in Sullivan, juve LWOP case
• The (unpreserved?) procedural issues in Graham juve LWOP case
• What might (and should) DOJ and other potential amici say about Graham and Sullivan?
• Analyzing the cert grants in both Graham and Sullivan
• House hearing on bill to eliminate juve LWOP sentences
• Gearing up for the SCOTUS juve LWOP cases on the horizon