© childrenofprison.eu
Some children go to jail. Some children never leave.
Some children go to jail. Some children never leave.
A United Nations human rights expert strongly condemned the U.S. on Tuesday for being the "only State in the world that still sentences children to life imprisonment without the opportunity for parole," thereby imposing cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment.
© www.un.org
Standing up for children's rights, Special Rapporteur Juan Méndez
Standing up for children's rights, Special Rapporteur Juan Méndez
Méndez noted that the U.S. practice of imposing life sentences on children in cases of homicide violates international law on numerous fronts, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child. "Life sentences or sentences of an extreme length have a disproportionate impact on children and cause physical and psychological harm that amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment," he wrote.
Such prison sentences are widespread. Approximately 2,500 people in the U.S. are currently serving life sentences without parole for crimes allegedly committed as juveniles, the Sentencing Project finds (pdf).
Comment: When public services are run for profit, judges are paid to fill jails and they do so with child convicts. Fill the prison, build another and increase the profit. The US holds 25% of the world's prison population for 5% of the world's people. In 1990 jail population was 1M and 5 private prisons, by 2000 it grew to 2M and 100 private prisons. Corporate stockholders make money off prisoners' work and taxpayer dollars. Prisoners = workforce = profit. Between 1980 and 1994 profits went from $392M to $1.31B. In private prisons, inmates receive as little as 17 cents per hour or $20 per month. Factories are firing their workers and contracting with prisoner-workers. It's about the money. And because they can.