Advertisement
Commentary
Mass. highest court decision shows how neuroscience can shape the treatment of young offenders
Our society often offers grace and mercy for impulsive choices made by college kids and late teens, understanding the challenges young adults face. We recognize they are still maturing.
But nine states still mandate life sentences without the possibility of parole for people convicted of first-degree murder, including those between the ages of 18 and 20. These emerging adults are sentenced to die in prison for the reckless, impetuous acts characteristic of their youth, often in situations that involved peer influence. Massachusetts is no longer one of those states.
In its landmark decision in Commonwealth v. Mattis, in a 4-3 split, the Supreme Judicial Court determined that the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights bars people under 21 from a sentence of life without parole. The court ruled that for people between the ages of 18 and 20, such sentences constitute “cruel or unusual” punishment because their brains are still developing. Their age also gives them diminished culpability and greater capacity for change than older adults, the court ruled.
The decision offers a template for how the science of brain development in emerging adults can shape the treatment of young people in the criminal system.
The court reviewed a robust scientific record from experts in developmental neuroscience and developmental psychology, and based its ruling on scientific consensus and evolving standards of decency about the treatment of emerging adults. The court’s decision creates parole eligibility for these young adults — an opportunity for release, but not a guarantee. (Full disclosure: I helped write an amicus brief in favor of the defendants for the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School and other organizations.)
Until last week, Massachusetts had the highest proportion of its prison population serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole in the country, tied with Louisiana. There were more people serving life sentences in 2020 in Massachusetts than the entire state prison population in 1970.
The impact of this decision is significant, not only for the roughly 200 people directly affected, as well as their families and the families of the victims in their cases, but for the entire commonwealth. One in five people serving life without parole in Massachusetts were 18, 19 or 20 at the time of their crimes, according to data produced by the Department of Correction. Sentencing so many young people to die in prison has resulted in the prolonged confinement of an aging population.
Nearly half of the people serving life without parole for offenses committed between the ages of 18-20 have served at least 25 years in prison already — more time in prison than they’d been alive.
Life sentences have a disproportionate impact on late adolescents — they will serve more total time in prison than older adults would on the same life sentence. This has significant human and fiscal costs, with little to no public safety benefit; indeed, studies have shown that paroled lifers are least likely to incur new arrests, convictions or imprisonment than people sentenced for other offenses.
The ... ruling is a beacon for jurisdictions across the country wrestling with how to address the crisis of aging prison populations and the role of mass incarceration and life sentences in society.
The stories that shape these young people’s experiences and that contextualize their crimes are diverse, but their lives were often affected by trauma, poverty, family separation, neglect, disinvestment and structural racism. People in our prisons typically have higher rates of having been homeless, never finishing high school, having substance use disorders, having been in the child welfare system, and having serious mental illness including PTSD.
Studies have repeatedly shown racial disparities in sentencing and imprisonment in the commonwealth, but the disparities among life without parole sentences for emerging adults outpace others. Black people are serving life without parole sentences for offenses committed at ages 18-20 at 16 times the rate for white people in Massachusetts, according to an analysis of Department of Correction data for an amicus brief in this case.
One in four Black people sentenced to die in prison in Massachusetts were 18-20 at the time of their crimes. Many dynamics likely contribute to these statistics, including how prosecutors have wielded their significant discretion in homicide charging decisions.
Some 130 people may be immediately eligible for parole as a result of the court’s decision, with others eligible for parole in the future. Lifer parole hearings are intense, emotional, searching processes. Families of victims may attend these hearings, and their grief, even decades later, may still be raw — an open wound, a loss that can never be forgotten or remedied.
Other families of victims may not attend or oppose release, perhaps believing the person who killed their loved one is not the same person from decades ago. This mirrors the Court's logic: 18-20-year-olds, whose brains were not fully developed, deserve an opportunity years later to take accountability for the harm they caused and to demonstrate they would never repeat the behavior that landed them in prison.
An amicus brief for the Committee for Public Counsel Services illustrates the powerful stories of three men serving life sentences who transformed themselves in prison, and who can now appear before the Parole Board. This relief is also available to people — disparately people of color — who may be innocent despite their life sentences and are still struggling to overturn their convictions.
The landmark Mattis ruling is a beacon for jurisdictions across the country wrestling with how to address the crisis of aging prison populations and the role of mass incarceration and life sentences in society. It is a blueprint to build on longstanding public support, including among people who have lost loved ones to violence, for rehabilitation and crime prevention over endless punishment.
