Abstract: In the Wake of Miller and Montgomery: A National View of the Juvenile Lifer Population (Society for Social Work and Research 28th Annual Conference - Recentering & Democratizing Knowledge: The Next 30 Years of Social Work Science)

Schedule:

Thursday, January 11, 2024

Independence BR C, ML 4 (Marriott Marquis Washington DC)

* noted as presenting author

J.Z. Bennett, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Cincinnati, OH

Daphne Brydon, PhD, LMSW, Lecturer, Researcher, Clinical Social Worker, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, MI

Jeffrey Ward, PhD, Associate Professor, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA

Dylan Jackson, PhD, Assistant Professor, The Johns Hopkins University, MD

Laura Abrams, PhD, Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA

Leah Ouellet, M.S., Doctoral Student, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL

Rebecca Turner, JD, Senior Litigation Counsel, Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, DC

Background and Purpose: The national movement to end mass incarceration has focused almost exclusively on non-violent felony offenders. Limited consideration has been given to individuals serving long-term sentences for acts of homicide, especially those sentenced to life as juveniles. Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions (Miller, 2012; Montgomery, 2016) and variations in state-level responses reveal a pressing need to know more about decarceration efforts and second chance considerations for ~2,900 individuals serving JLWOP sentences. While there have been a few isolated studies of juvenile lifers in select states, there is a critical need to understand the national landscape. The present study is the first to develop a national database that document the juvenile lifer population.

Methods: We cross-referenced data from The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth and The Sentencing Project to create a comprehensive dataset of all juvenile lifers across the United States. The dataset includes demographics, legal and case factors, and the current status (e.g., resentenced, released, not yet resentenced, deceased) of individuals recorded as serving a JLWOP sentence at the time of Miller. The study utilized descriptive statistics (e.g., frequencies, means, standard deviations), Sankey diagrams, and digital cartography to provide a national view of the juvenile lifer population.

Results: Juvenile lifers in the United States are overwhelmingly male (97%) and majority Black (61%)—similar rates compared to those serving other types of life sentences. As of March 2023, approximately one-third of juvenile lifers (N=976) have been resentenced and released, with just over half resentenced but not yet released. Approximately 370 are still awaiting resentencing. Across all status categories, approximately 70 juvenile lifers have died since the imposition of their JLWOP sentence. Visual diagrams in the present study offer a comprehensive display for how juvenile lifers fared in the wake of the specific federal and state policies that granted possibility for resentencing parole, and release.

Conclusions and Implications: The development of a comprehensive, national database of juvenile lifers offers an opportunity to better understand national decarceration efforts and provides a foundation for future analyses that examine issues related to equity, safety and recidivism, and mortality among people serving life and long-term sentences.