We need only look to our recent past to see examples. What is reasonable at one time to a person, or anation of people (e.g., child labor, women as property, right to own slaves) can later be understood tobe (and have always been) unreasonable or unjust. In general, we forgive a society for being imperfect(as people are imperfect) though we demand it improve at all times.All apparent indicators in our society today imply that people change over time. That the humancondition is not sealed in childhood, but of a developing and transient state. We speak to the youngoften, reminding them they most likely will look back and see things very differently, such is thechange that a human mind and heart travel on the path to adulthood. It makes sense that thisunderstanding would be codified in the sentencing of minors.Today, parole exists for adults. It is a given that a grown person can see the error of their ways andhave changed over time, or simply grow to be something better than they were. Or at least merit asecond chance. But aren’t children even more likely to change over time than an adult who hasalready grown through his or her most malleable and fluid phases of mental and emotionaldevelopment? And who is more deserving of a second chance than a child? None of this is to sayevery child sentenced to life in prison would or should walk free. The possibility of parole is just that:possibility. The allowance that a person is not a static thing. A hope for a human being to hold on towhile in the hell that prisons are. A reason for them to live, and live well.To hold that juvenile life without parole sentencesare just, one would also have to exclude childrenfrom this possibility of potential to change overtime. To hold that juvenile life without parolesentences are fair, we also must consider thosepeople—specifically young people—who break alaw to be of a type of human unlike theperpetually law-abiding and thus subject to aseparate morality. These types of notions oncriminal nature was once prevalent in the US inthe late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,when doctors and scientists of the era went togreat lengths to attempt a codification of forehead measurements or family histories to make a case forcriminality being something that marked one apart from the rest of the species. It was a gross andunenlightened view that aided the concurrent eugenics practices of the day. Clearly we have movedbeyond the thinking of those times.Another troubling aspect of the lack of any possibility to redress a life sentence is how people of colorare disproportionately affected by so many aspects of law, from who gets stopped more, searchedmore, and shot more, to sentencing. In the US, African American children are actually ten times morelikely than white children to receive a life without parole sentence. In California, the ratio is evenmore striking, at an egregious 20 to 1. When it comes to Latinos, half of the inmates incarcerated infederal prison have no previous criminal record, are least likely to be both violent and nonviolentrecidivists. At the same time, Latinos are less likely overall to be given parole or probation thannon-Latinos! These facts all add up to a powerful and destructive form of institutionalized racism.Given we understand those iniquities in our justice system exist and have been documented, are wecomfortable with a life sentence in prison for minors, without even the possibility of parole one day?Doesn’t this mechanism resemble a giant tax-payer-funded killing machine aimed at one part of thepopulation?
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