Tagged: juvenile offenders

Michigan is one of 25 states that allow convicted teens, under the age of 18, to be imprisoned with adults.

Attorney Deborah LaBelle is a juvenile justice advocate with the ACLU. She estimates nearly 200,000 children have been abused in adult prisons. LaBelle recently returned from Washington, D.C. where the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights conducted a hearing on this issue with representatives from the U.S. State Department. The hearing focused on the physical, sexual, and psychological abuse experienced by children when housed with adults in prisons.

"In addition to the physical and psychological harm that's going on, putting children in the adult facilitates also results in them losing the very two things that makes them children: education and contact with their family and parents," LaBelle said in this interview with Jennifer White.

You can listen to the full interview above.

Fewer teens and kids are incarcerated now in Michigan than fifteen years ago. A new report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation says youth incarceration in the state has dropped 44 percent since 1997.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Gov. Rick Snyder has signed a bill to make it easier for people to wipe juvenile crimes off their record.

The new law will allow people to go to court to erase up to three offenses a year after the case is closed, instead of five years. The old law allowed only one offense to be expunged.

The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Joe Haveman, R-Holland, was easily approved in the Michigan House and Senate before the Legislature's recent adjournment.

The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down mandatory life sentences for juveniles convicted of murder does not apply retroactively.

The case involved a resentencing request for Raymond Carp. In 2006, Carp was convicted of first-degree murder as a 16-year old.

State Attorney General Bill Schuette has not given up on trying to keep juvenile lifers behind bars.

Next week, he plans to file to join a case before the state Court of Appeals involving a 21-year-old man convicted in 2006 of assisting a murder.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June struck down mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles as unconstitutional.

Schuette spokeswoman Joy Yearout says the attorney general believes the ruling should not apply to people who are already serving sentences.

"For many of these cases it's been years, decades even, since the crime occurred. And these victims’ families thought they had a sense of closure. This could result in them having to be hauled back into court, relive the crime, be re-victimized again. And it would really be a mess for our justice system here in Michigan," says Yearout.
    
The ACLU of Michigan says the state cannot continue to keep people in jail without a new hearing if the U.S. Supreme Court says the sentence is cruel and unusual.

Michigan has more than 360 people serving mandatory life sentences for crimes committed when they were under the age of 18.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette says hundreds of juveniles sentenced to life without parole for murder or complicity in a murder should not get re-sentencing hearings.

Schuette says a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down Michigan’s mandatory life without parole law for juveniles should only apply to future cases. He has asked the state Supreme Court to limit the scope of the federal decision.

Randy Wood is a spokesman for the attorney general. He says Schuette believes re-sentencing hearings would be a mistake.

There is some question on the reach of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down automatic life-without-parole sentences for juveniles.

Attorney General Bill Schuette’s office says it may only apply going forward and not to the 366 juvenile lifers currently serving in Michigan prisons.

Dawn Van Hoek directs the State Appellate Defender Office, which represents some of the juvenile lifers. She disagrees and said every juvenile sentenced to life without parole should get a new hearing.

“I think they’ve already signaled, the Supreme Court has, and, you know, you have to wonder why even bother if you’re not going to apply it to the hundreds of people who were affected nationwide by these unconstitutional laws,” said Van Hoek.

That would also require the state to track down the families of murder victims who have a right under Michigan law to testify at sentencing hearings.