Supreme Court ban on juvenile lifers is a win for African-Americans

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“The legislatures of Arkansas and Alabama, like those of other jurisdictions… have determined that all offenders convicted of specified homicide offenses, whether juveniles or not, deserve a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.  Nothing in our Constitution authorizes this Court to supplant that choice,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas, siding with the conservative wing of the court.

“Today’s decision invalidates a constitutionally permissible sentencing system based on nothing more than the Court’s belief that “its own sense of morality . . . pre-empts that of the people and their representatives,” Thomas added.

However, the decision still allows for life sentences without the possibility of parole for juveniles, meaning they will never again see the light of day.  Amnesty International notes that America is the only nation that allows the practice to continue.  The only one, which says a great deal about a country that calls itself the land of the free.  And there are 2,500 people in the U.S. serving life for crimes they committed as children.

“The disconnect between the U.S. and the rest of the world with respect to the sentencing of youth remains wide and deep,” said Marsha Levick, Deputy Director and Chief Legal Counsel at the Juvenile Law Center, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit law office dealing with children’s rights.  “The battle to eliminate juvenile life without parole sentences will continue, not just in the courts but in the legislatures as well. Children must have the opportunity to demonstrate maturity and growth even in prison; principles of fundamental fairness and the belief in human dignity demands no less.”

This time around, the Supreme Court has decided to side with human rights and the notion of second chances.  In the largest prison nation in the world — with over 2.5 million people locked up, behind bars, and disproportionately poor, uneducated, black and brown — we often lock ‘em up and throw away the key.

And society believes it can throw away all of its problems in the process.  A cradle-to-prison pipeline thrives on failing, crumbling urban schools, which are merely feeder schools for the penitentiary.  More bodies in jail for longer sentences help enrich the careers of politicians and prosecutors, and fill the coffers of the corporations that profit from the incarceration.

But with Miller, America’s highest court has suggested that young people are salvageable.  And in the process, the court provides hope that it is salvageable as well.

Follow David A. Love on Twitter at @davidalove