In the wake of Supreme Court decisions that have limited extreme sentences for juveniles, states are relying on parole boards to put those rulings into effect.
But those boards operate with little transparency, rarely focus on how a prisoner has changed while serving their time and ultimately seldom grant parole to serious offenders, the ACLU researchers said.
“It’s wonderful there is attention on making sure juveniles and other young people aren’t going to die in prison, but all the responsibilities for making sure they do get released are in the backwater of parole,” said Sarah Mehta, the lead author of the report.
The researchers investigated parole systems across the country, including interviews with 124 prisoners who were between the ages of 12 and 26 when they committed serious crimes.
They found that in 12 states, more than 8,300 prisoners are serving sentences of parolable life, or at least 40 years, for crimes they committed as juveniles. Thousands more who committed crimes in their late teens or early 20s also have been sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.
[For more of this story, written by Sarah Barr, go to http://jjie.org/2016/11/29/par...se-aclu-report-says/]
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