Introduction
In a life full of choices, freedom can be overwhelming. Individuals have the choice to do as they please and live life without restraint. With that being considered, it’s incredibly easy to neglect that freedom and do bad with it rather than actual good. Here is where consequences come into play. For those juveniles that have been sentenced to life without parole, this is where consequences end that neglected freedom. Life without parole in juvenile delinquents has been a highly controversial topic for many years. In 2012, the official decision from the Supreme Court declared that life without parole (LWOP) should be banned for all juveniles. Life without parole should be seriously evaluated on its effectiveness by first looking at the history, then discussing how life without parole is a controversial sentencing, before lastly ending on where we stand now with LWOP and what can be done to make it better.
Literature Review
When regarding life without parole, it’s essential to examine the history of it and how life without parole became so controversial. Currently, the United States is the only country that sentences juveniles to life without parole (Rovner, 2016). This causes severe skepticism from other countries around the world. Within the last twenty years, we as a country have seen significant change regarding life without parole. This can be seen through incredibly critical court cases that changed history regarding life without parole. The first instance would be the court case Roper v. Simmons. In 2005, Roper v. Simmons banned execution of those who committed murder before age eighteen. The Supreme Court ruled that juveniles should not be sentenced to death, and that immaturity within juvenile time periods prohibits their sense of guilt (Life without Parole, 2012). The court went on to state that the death sentence for those younger than eighteen was seen as cruel and unusual punishment, a violation of the 8th amendment. The Roper ruling affected seventy-two juveniles that were currently on death row in twelve separate states. During the nearly three decades of legalized death penalty sentences for juveniles, starting in 1976 and ending in 2005 after the Roper decision, twenty-two individuals who had been charged has juveniles were put to death (Rovner, 2016). This sentencing impacted the juvenile justice system in a massive way. Now that the death penalty for juveniles was off of the table, life without parole became the most serious punishment. Overall, this case had both benefits and incredibly negative effects. The major overall benefit is that juveniles were no longer being put to death. At the time, Justice Kennedy stated that “children are constitutionally different from adults in their level of culpability (Rovner, 2016).” This is an accurate statement because children function differently from adults and don’t have the competency to assess situations like adults can. Therefore, children shouldn’t be put to death for bad actions because they don’t comprehend it to the same degree as adults. With that said, Roper v. Simmons also opened the door for some big issues that would soon be seen in other cases. Since the death penalty for juveniles was no longer available, the best option for the “harshest punishment” was that of life without parole. When a severe case came into the court room, life without parole was definitely on the table for punishment. So while this case was effective in the fact that children were no longer being put to death, it created other large problems that would soon be seen across the country. With life without parole being recognized as the harshest …show more content…
For some, it may be seen as effective, whereas overall, life without parole is ineffective. Overall, it has come to the attention of some that life without parole is indeed bad. As stated previously, life without parole for juveniles is cruel and unusual. Juveniles can’t fully grasp what is happening because their brains haven’t fully developed to understand the full extent of the crime they may commit. Juveniles are young and at a stage in life where their moral views are developing and adapting (Brown & Birkenes, 2012). By sentencing a juvenile to life without parole, it strips the rights from juveniles to ever be rehabilitated and return to society to live a semi-normal