It’s the teenage girl currently in juvenile detention whose trauma-driven anger is routinely unaddressed and penalized as noncompliance.
It’s the teenage boy who, seeking acceptance, community, and an outlet for his trauma, was sentenced to spend a lifetime behind bars.
It’s the emerging adult who, with no GED and no vision for college, shoulders a host of adult responsibilities like caring for siblings, children, and parents but can’t find a livable wage job because of justice-involvement.
Punishment is not the answer. Resources, treatment, and support are.
We advocate for the rights of these young people and others, champion alternatives to incarceration, provide pathways to social and economic mobility, and challenge policies and practices that ignore mental health and developmental research, continuing cycles of incarceration.
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Project Partners
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Through our Youth Sentencing Project, we provide direct strategic litigation on behalf of youth who were tried in the adult criminal legal system and given extremely long prison sentences, particularly those sentenced to life without parole.
Youth should be held accountable for their wrongdoing in developmentally appropriate ways that consider their age, individual characteristics, and specific circumstances of their cases.
Our staff litigators take the lead on a limited number of cases every year, selecting those that have the potential to influence system-wide change. Last year, LSJA was involved in 13 cases challenging the transfer of youth (either as lead counsel or in a technical support role) and won 12 of these cases.
