{"id":755,"date":"2007-10-18T11:14:01","date_gmt":"2007-10-18T11:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jwalking\/2007\/10\/americas-heartlessness.html"},"modified":"2007-10-18T11:14:01","modified_gmt":"2007-10-18T11:14:01","slug":"americas-heartlessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/10\/americas-heartlessness.html","title":{"rendered":"America’s heartlessness?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Great journalism<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In December, the United Nations took up a resolution calling for the abolition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for children and young teenagers. The vote was 185 to 1, with the United States the lone dissenter.
\nIndeed, the United States stands alone in the world in convicting young adolescents as adults and sentencing them to live out their lives in prison. According to a new report, there are 73 Americans serving such sentences for crimes they committed at 13 or 14.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What makes this piece so good isn’t just the topic, it is the exploration of the complexities of the issue…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think every 14-year-old who killed someone deserves life without parole,\u201d said Laura Poston, who prosecuted Ms. Jones. \u201cBut Ashley planned to kill four people. I don\u2019t think there is a conscience in Ashley, and I certainly think she is a threat to do something similar.\u201d
\nSpecialists in comparative law acknowledge that there have been occasions when young murderers who would have served life terms in the United States were released from prison in Europe and went on to kill again. But comparing legal systems is difficult, in part because the United States is a more violent society and in part because many other nations imprison relatively few people and often only for repeat violent offenses.
\n\u201cI know of no systematic studies of comparative recidivism rates,\u201d said James Q. Whitman, who teaches comparative criminal law at Yale. \u201cI believe there are recidivism problems in countries like Germany and France, since those are countries that ordinarily incarcerate only dangerous offenders, but at some point they let them out and bad things can happen.\u201d
\nThe differences in the two approaches, legal experts said, are rooted in politics and culture. The European systems emphasize rehabilitation, while the American one stresses individual responsibility and punishment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Great journalism: In December, the United Nations took up a resolution calling for the abolition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for children and young teenagers. The vote was 185 to 1, with the United States the lone dissenter. Indeed, the United States stands alone in the world in convicting young adolescents as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nAmerica's heartlessness? - J Walking<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/10\/americas-heartlessness.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"America's heartlessness? - J Walking\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Great journalism: In December, the United Nations took up a resolution calling for the abolition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for children and young teenagers. 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