Question

What should the maximum sentence for a juvenile who commits a heinous crime be? Why? Is that lenient or punitive? What is the goal of your response?

Answer 1

Does sentencing a juvenile offender to life in prison violate the Constitution's prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishment"? The Supreme Court is set to consider that question. The court will hear two cases of juvenile offenders who committed non-homicidal offenses and were sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

Supporters of the sentences note that both convicts, while juvenile, were repeat offenders, and that one brutally raped a senior citizen, though only 13 at the time. Yet the attorneys are drawing on the Supreme Court's 2005 ruling overturning juvenile death sentences to argue that life sentences, too, should be unconstitutional.

• Children Are Different, declare the Los Angeles Times editors, echoing the arguments used to rule the juvenile death penalty unconstitutional in 2005:

Youths lack the sense of responsibility that society requires of adults. Their personalities are not yet fixed; they are more susceptible to the negative influences of other people or events. Society's understandable demand for retribution is necessarily blunted when the perpetrator of a crime is a juvenile.

Likewise, the threat of a stiff penalty cannot have the same deterrent effect on a youth as it does on an adult; young people have too little experience to fully grasp the consequences of their actions.