New Nonprofit Supports Children in Adult Criminal-Justice System

In Pennsylvania, children can be charged as adults as young as age 10, and Pennsylvania imprisons more children for the rest of their lives without the possibility of parole than any other state in the country, which imprisons more children than any other country in the world. A new Philadelphia-based organization—the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project (YSRP)—was created to support these children prosecuted in the adult criminal system and the lawyers who represent them by providing technical assistance for defense attorneys at sentencing and by supporting youth and their loved ones through the time the young people are released from prison.

The Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project aims to humanize the sentencing and reintegration process for children in Philadelphia’s adult criminal-justice system. Through the dissemination of best practices and hands-on support to criminal defense practitioners in individual cases, YSRP serves to enhance the capacity of criminal justice system actors to approach sentencing and reentry through a child-specific lens. YSRP will do this by drawing from and helping attorneys present to the sentencing court research about adolescent brain development and recent U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence. Specifically, the court in Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. ___ (2012), has recognized that children “‘are more vulnerable … to negative influences and outside pressures,’ including from their family and peers; they have limited ‘contro[l] over their own environment’ and lack the ability to extricate themselves from horrific, crime-producing settings.” If convicted, children in the adult system often face lengthy prison sentences, such as life without parole, as well as the collateral consequences of adult convictions, which create barriers to success in education, employment and housing opportunities. YSRP strives to reduce recidivism among youth who become involved in the adult criminal-justice system by obtaining more rehabilitative services for them at sentencing and by beginning the process of preparing for reintegration into the community before a child even receives his or her sentence.