Research That Matters (January 17 - 20, 2008)

Problem: An increase in youth violence in the 1980s led to stricter and more punitive sentencing policies. By 2005 all states had the capacity to try juveniles as adults – bypassing the juvenile system. Trying youth as adults opened the door to mandatory sentencing – including life without parole (LWOP) – which ignores the development and psychological immaturity of adolescents (Grisso, Steinberg, Woolard, Cauffman, Scott, et al., 2003). Even though sentencing youth to LWOP violates international human rights standards (Parker & Berger, 2006); few legislators want to appear soft on crime. One strategy for influencing policy change is to determine public opinion, providing legislators with information on policies their constituents are likely to accept or reject. Method: Analysis of public opinion in Michigan, where the rate of juvenile LWOP is the second highest in the nation, was conducted through two consecutive years of an annual statewide survey. Samples of those over 18 were found through random digit dialing, conducted by a university survey center, in 2005 (n=750) and 2006 (n=640). Research questions included queries of the respondent's agreement with current policy and their preferred sentencing of youth that committed homicide. Bivariate and linear trend analyses were used to assess the relationships between responses and demographic characteristics. Finally logistic regression was used to determine what characteristics most strongly predict agreement with the current policy. Results: The total sample was more likely to disagree or strongly disagree with the policy (47.0%) than agree/strongly agree (42.6%), but 10.5% of the sample neither agreed nor disagreed. Although the policy query provided some detail on the current policy, it did not distinguish between incarcerations of youth in adult versus juvenile prisons. When given the option to choose a sentence for a youth that committed homicide, only 5% of respondents agreed with LWOP – the current policy. Over 66% of the respondents supported the use of ‘blended' intermediate sentences between the juvenile and adult systems. Women were nearly half as likely to support LWOP as males (O.R. = 0.54; 85% CI 0.32 - 0.93). Similarly, African Americans were much less likely to support juvenile LWOP when compared with whites (OR = 0.26; 95%CI 0.08 - 0.86). Conclusions and Implications: We found discrepancies between those who reported agreeing with the current policy and those choosing this policy when given several sentencing options. These opinions seem to suggest that: 1) Michigan citizens support the rehabilitation possibilities of juveniles, and 2) the public may not understand the details of the current policy. Social workers need to educate the public on the realities of current policies and to advocate for policy changes that respect the developmental differences of youth. This study has been issued as a press release, written as a policy brief and presented during a legislative briefing to support such amended legislation.