This month Tony Bornstein reviews The Master Plan: My Journey from Life in Prison to a Life of Purpose by Chris Wilson with Bret Witter.

People exiting the custody of the criminal justice system encounter substantial challenges in gaining employment, finding housing, and accessing medical and mental health care. This article explores areas in need of attention and reform so that young people who have been adjudicated delinquent or convicted of a crime are not punished subsequently by other systems they encounter.

The United States has over 2,500 youth offenders serving life in prison without the possibility of parole. The rest of the world has zero.

Last summer, NACDL members completed a survey on the impact of allegations of gang affiliation on bail decisions and pretrial detention. The survey was inspired by a case in which a 16-year-old — considered an adult in the New York criminal justice system — was jailed on a first-arrest misdemeanor charge when a prosecutor requested high bail at arraignment, alleging that the youth was in the gang database.

During the next 18 months, the work of NACDL’s Juvenile Justice Committee will focus on the landmark decision in Graham v. Florida, in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that adolescents who commit non-homicide offenses cannot receive life without the possibility of parole (LWOP), and must be given a meaningful opportunity for release.

Of the 2,500 people in the United States who have been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for crimes committed before they were 18, two-thirds of them are concentrated in just five states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Louisiana, California, and Florida. There are thousands more children across the country sentenced to “virtual life” sentences of 60, 70, 80, or 100 or more years.

First enacted in 1974, the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) embodies the federal government’s best efforts to improve juvenile justice systems at the state and local levels.

This month Tony Bornstein reviews A Stone of Hope by Jim St. Germain with Jon Sternfeld.

Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions change the way youth are tried and sentenced. NACDL has formed partnerships with juvenile defense organizations to develop training materials and webinars that offer tips for best practices.

The last decade has given rise to an unprecedented series of decisions that relies upon common sense, science, and social science to require that youth be considered differently than adults in criminal procedure and sentencing matters. In Roper v. Simmons,¹ Graham v. Florida,² J.D.B. v. North Carolina,³ and Miller v. Alabama,⁴ the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a series of decisions that calls for transformational change in the way that children are treated in criminal procedure and sentencing matters. 

The landmark trilogy of juvenile sentencing decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court¹ has led to calls for systematic changes to many other aspects of the juvenile justice system. Whether it is challenging other draconian sentences as applied to juveniles,² abolishing transfer or waiver to adult criminal court,³ or myriad other creative ideas, the possibilities are seemingly endless.

Who were the Scottsboro Boys? 

In many respects, interviewing a child client shares many of the same characteristics as the interview of an adult client. 

In June 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Miller v. Alabama that the practice of sentencing children to mandatory life without parole violates the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments. In doing so, it also provided attorneys representing people facing life without parole for crimes that occurred when they were under 18 with new opportunities and obligations to present a universe of mitigating evidence that would counsel in favor of imposing some other lesser sentence. 

More than three dozen organizations have endorsed the “Trial Defense Guidelines: Representing a Child Client Facing a Possible Life Sentence.” The guidelines set forth the roles and responsibilities of the defense team for the duration of a trial proceeding and outline child-specific considerations relevant to pretrial, trial, and sentencing representation.