The UK and US are still indulging in the barbaric practice of handing children adult prison sentences

December’s broadcast of the BBC drama Responsible Child highlighted the plight of youth in criminal justice systems. Based on a true story, it recounts the trial of 12-year-old Ray who, along with his 23 year old brother Nathan, is charged with murdering his abusive stepfather. Whilst not shying away from the boys’ culpability, the programme scrutinises a practice widespread in global justice systems: treating children like adults.

In the UK, children as young as 10 can be tried as adults for the most serious crimes. This is already one of the lowest ages in the world. However, this pales in comparison to the United States, where many states have no lower age limit for trial as adults. Children are certainly capable of causing lasting harm – why, some might ask, shouldn’t we hold them as accountable as adults?

The first argument is scientific. The parts of the brain responsible for impulse-control and decision-making continue developing well into our twenties, impacting a child’s judgement and reasoning. Children are not as neurologically capable as adults of understanding the long-term implications of their actions, as any parent with teenagers will testify. Moreover, studies have shown that the vast majority of children age out of criminal conduct. We accept this in other contexts: children cannot legally vote, drink alcohol or serve on juries, in part because we acknowledge that their cognitive faculties are not fully developed – yet justice systems around the world persist in trying and sentencing children as if they are.

The second argument is moral. We measure a society by how it treats its most vulnerable. When children are exposed to trauma or grow up in dangerous environments, they have no agency to remove themselves from the situation. In fact, most children sentenced to life without parole in the US grow up in traumatic environments: nearly 80 percent reported witnessing violence in their homes, and more than half witnessed weekly violence in their neighbourhoods. Half of all children sentenced to life in prison without parole have been physically abused; a fifth have been sexually abused. In handing these children extreme sentences, we are not accounting for the ways in which society failed to protect them. By showing children compassion and forgiveness, we demonstrate our values.

Bulldozing these arguments, the US justice system sentences children to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Even crueller, this sentence can be applied to cases in which the child involved did not directly harm anyone: Marshan Allen, for example, who was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole at 16 after serving as a lookout during a robbery. There are currently hundreds of people serving such sentences, sentences so universally regarded as barbaric that they are prohibited in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The US is unique in this cruelty, being the only country known to condemn children to die in prison.

None of this is to say that children who commit serious offenses should not be held accountable. Yet they should be sentenced in juvenile courts that take into account their age and circumstances. Their sentences should also always allow for the possibility of release, with processes that assess their positive change and maturation. To say an adult is entirely beyond redemption is incredibly severe. To say that a child is irreparably broken is reprehensible.

Beyond the human toll of spending decades incarcerated, life without parole wastes a colossal amount of resources. It costs approximately $2.5 million to incarcerate a child for life in the US; by contrast, a tax-paying, college-educated adult contributes over $1 million to society over their lifetime. If paroled after serving 10 years starting at the age of 16, a child with only a high-school education could potentially contribute only $218,560 in tax revenue if they work until age 66. The value lost to society – to say nothing of the emotional cost to families and communities – is particularly troubling given that scientific evidence shows that children are uniquely capable of redemption and change.

Change is coming. Since the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth was launched in 2009, by US activists who had successfully campaigned to ban the death penalty for children, we have seen a groundswell of bipartisan support for reform. The number of states that ban life without parole for children has more than quadrupled since 2012. Hundreds who were told as children they were worth nothing more than dying in prison have been freed, and over a thousand have received new, shorter sentences, giving them hope of a second chance. But for those languishing in prison, change cannot come fast enough.

Preston Shipp is senior policy counsel for the Campaign for the Fairer Sentencing of Youth