As mental health professionals with an understanding of human development, we must firmly condemn the practice of sentencing children under eighteen years old to life imprisonment without possibility of parole.  We know that the brain is not fully developed at eighteen and that judgement and self-control are not yet in place under the best of conditions.  In fact the brain does not fully mature until age 25; dopamine transmission, which has to do with impulse control, does not mature until that age as well.

Therefore we are utterly dismayed to learn of  the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision (Jones V. Mississippi), authored by Brett Kavanaugh, which reverses recent precedent and makes it easier for judges to impose this sentence.  If sentencing a child to die in prison is not cruel and unusual punishment, the words lose all meaning. 

            In the case in question a fifteen year old boy, the victim of severe physical abuse, was sent to live with his equally abusive grandfather.  He also lost access to his psychiatric medications as a result of this move.  Faced with yet another beating, he stabbed his grandfather, then tried to resuscitate him.  As Justice Sotomayor pointed out in her scathing dissent, children of color make up 70% of such sentences.  A judicial system based on cruelty and racism harms not just those caught in its vice.  It harms all people of color, especially children, who are looking for examples to live by.   

            As mental health professionals, we deal every day with the effects of trauma.  That is why we must stand up against those aspects of our criminal justice system, from the courts to the police, that inflict trauma, rather than protect us from it.