When I Die … They’ll Send Me Home: Youth Sentenced to Life without Parole in California, An Update (2012)

Read Report 07/05/2012 12:43 PM EDT This report examines the sentencing of youth in California to life without parole, more or less a death sentence. This text is divided into five parts: youth sentenced to die in California prisons—troubling facts, international norms, adolescent differences from adults, financial costs, and dramatically changing legal perspectives; recommendations; parallel cases, starkly different results; changed lives; and arbitrary outcomes—plea bargaining with a teen, teens perception of time, predicting who a teenager will be at age 40, other existing sentencing law, and changes in California law reducing checks and balances. SOURCE: Human Rights Watch (New York, NY). Authored by Calvin, Elizabeth; Weir, Annie; Nahoray, Dana; Breen, Austen.