Two years after the US supreme court banned mandatory sentences of life without parole for people under 18 years old, most of the states that carry the brutal punishment have done nothing to change their ways, leaving the vast majority of the prisoners already on the sentence still facing the prospect of spending the rest of their natural life in a cell.



A report from the Washington-based justice reform body, the Sentencing Project, underlines what has become a legal paradox. In 2012, the highest judicial panel ruled in Miller v Alabama that mandatory life without parole for juveniles was a violation of the eighth amendment that forbids cruel and unusual punishment. Yet since then only 13 of the 28 states that carry the sentence have amended their laws.

Even many among those 13 have failed to meet the spirit of the supreme court’s ruling by replacing full-life sentences with exceptionally harsh terms that will still see prisoners who were convicted as teenagers – some as young as 13 – languish in prison until their elder years. Nebraska has introduced a minimum 40 years in custody for juveniles convicted of homicide before a parole review can even be contemplated.

In Iowa, the governor went even further and commuted all the state’s juvenile life without parole sentences to minimum terms of 60 years.

In a criminal justice system renowned for its toughness – the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world – the locking away of children for their entire lives is widely considered to be singularly harsh. America is the only country in the world, bar none, that allows kids to be sentenced to die in prison with no chance of rehabilitation.

Yet as Justice Elena Kagan spelled out in Miller v Alabama, advances in scientific knowledge of the brain has highlighted differences between the adult and juvenile brain. She concluded that such differences both “lessened a child’s ‘moral culpability’ and enhanced the prospect that, as the years go by and neurological development occurs, his ‘deficiencies will be reformed’.”

The paradox is especially severe for as many as 2,000 who had already been sentenced as juveniles to life without parole before the supreme court issued its ban. The ruling left unstated whether or not the prohibition should be retroactive, leaving those prisoners caught in a form of judicial stasis.

Only ten of the 28 states affected by Miller v Alabama have, either through legislation or court order, decided that the ruling is retroactive and allowed for resentencing hearings. But that still leaves the vast majority of the 2,000 in a state of legal limbo.

Among them is Quantel Lotts, who the Guardian interviewed in 2012 shortly before the supreme court issued its ban.

Lotts killed his step-brother during a play session that turned into a fight. He was 14 years and 21 days old at the time – an age he would be deemed under the law of his state, Missouri, to be too young to leave school, donate blood, or have a tattoo without parental approval. Yet he was tried as an adult and sentenced to the most extreme punishment short of the death penalty.

In the interview, Lotts talked about his remorse at killing his step-brother, his conviction that he had changed, and his despair at his sentence: “It's hard. I can't accept that I'll be here for the rest of my life. They might as well have given me the death penalty, it's just the same.”

Today, Lotts remains on life without parole.

“Children are uniquely capable of change and require a second look down the road,” the Sentencing Project says. “Juveniles have a capacity for rehabilitation that should not be ignored.”