Young offenders should be rehabilitated
This ruling serves also as a reminder of how far this country still has to go. Capital punishment for juvenile offenders was deemed unconstitutional as recently as 2005.
While life in prison without parole is an appropriate sentence for certain violent offenders, justice is not served when the sentence is given to someone who is not legally recognized as an adult. The goal with young offenders, even violent ones, should be rehabilitation. Judges should seek to impose a punishment that fits both the severity of the crime and the status of the offender.
It's time for this country to recommit itself to the notion of true justice — not the Wild West, eye-for-an-eye version. True justice is about matching a punishment to a crime in a way that preserves the integrity of a society's laws and core values. In a country where 33 states still have laws authorizing the death penalty, the notion of true justice sometimes seems like a bad joke.
Now that we've finally stopped putting children to death or throwing them in prison for the rest of their lives, we might be able to see that taking a life in the name of justice diminishes us all.
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