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May 9, 2018

Detailed review of Illinois juve offenders serving just barely "less than life"

Less-than-life-featureThe Chicago Sun-Times has published this extensive look by Injustice Watch at how the Illinois has sentenced (and largely failed to resentence) a set of juvenile offenders serving extreme long prison sentences . The full lengthy title of this piece sets forth its essential elements: "Less than life: Across the country, juvenile offenders are being released from prison based on recognition that human brains continue to develop for the first two and a half decades of life.  Nevertheless in Illinois, many who commit crimes as teenagers are likely destined to die in custody."  Here is an excerpt:

In Illinois, it is rare for juveniles who did not receive automatic life prison terms to win new chances at sentencing, leaving most of those with long sentences to languish in prison for decades, an Injustice Watch review found.

A review of custody data from the Illinois Department of Corrections revealed that, as of last December, at least 167 current inmates were arrested for crimes as juveniles and are set to serve 50 years or more in prison without parole eligibility, leaving them likely to die in custody but not eligible for resentencing under the dictates of Miller. (It is not possible to know the exact number of young offenders serving long sentences at the Illinois Department of Corrections because the agency does not specifically keep track of that information.)

The imposition of long sentences is especially harsh in Illinois, a state which does not afford parole to most prisoners and which requires offenders convicted of murder to serve 100 percent of their punishment, with no chance of early release based on factors like good conduct or rehabilitation. Such sentences almost certainly lead these inmates to either spend the rest of their lives incarcerated or be released with precious little life left.

Research indicates that incarceration has a jarring effect on life expectancy. In studying a group of inmates released from New York state correctional facilities over a 10-year period, Vanderbilt University Professor Evelyn Patterson found that the former prisoners could expect to shave two years off of their average life expectancy for every one year of incarceration. Furthermore, Patterson found, undoing the negative effect on longevity takes time. It took former inmates two-thirds of the time spent in custody back on the outside to recover from the harm of incarceration on life expectancy. The United States Sentencing Commission considers a 39-year prison sentence the equivalent of life.

Because Illinois almost entirely abolished parole in 1978, these juvenile offenders do not get the same chance to show rehabilitation and change that they might get in other states. About a third of states do not currently employ the traditional practice of parole for newly convicted inmates, according to a report published by the University of Minnesota’s Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, but Illinois is one of three states nationwide that stopped utilizing parole four decades ago, making it nearly non-existent for the current prison population.

The approximately 80 juvenile offenders in Illinois who became eligible to have their sentences reconsidered [after Miller] all were convicted of killing more than one person — Illinois law mandates life for anyone convicted of multiple murders. By contrast, Illinois state appellate judges have mostly declined to find that the cases of other violent youthful offenders ... fall under the protections outlined in Miller.

There is no national legal standard on how many years is too many for a juvenile to serve. Courts across the country have differed on the issue, creating varied standards on what length of a prison term can legally be considered a life sentence. “Getting rid of formal life without parole was the tip of the iceberg,” said Marsha Levick, deputy director and chief counsel for the Pennsylvania-based Juvenile Law Center, which has advocated for lesser sentences for juveniles convicted of crimes.

Across the country, about a dozen states have passed laws requiring that young defendants sentenced to long prison terms get a chance at parole. Legislators in Illinois have proposed a bill that would give periodic parole opportunities to newly convicted young offenders; so far those efforts have stalled.

May 9, 2018 at 10:32 AM | Permalink

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