If you are 15 years old in this country, you can't drive, vote or get married, but you can be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Sound strange? Eighteen is the age where our society deems you a legal adult. It is the age when you can first vote, buy cigarettes and sign legal documents. It is the age when our society deems a person responsible enough to make his or her own decisions. Yet, in certain places around the country, we are trying teenagers - and sometimes even children - as adults for crimes they committed when they were minors. This leads to harsher sentences, including life in prison without parole, which is far too extreme for childhood offenders.
Currently both federal law and the laws of 42 states allow child offenders to be sentenced to life in prison without parole, making the United States one of the few countries in the world to continue this practice. According to a report by the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit law organization, over 2,225 juveniles have been sentenced to life in prison without parole in the United States. This issue has recently been brought to the national spotlight because of the case of Jordan Brown. Brown was only 11 years old when he allegedly shot his father's fianc
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