The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments back in March whether a young killer should be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. Is this cruel and unusual punishment? George Will comments, “The case illustrates the complexity of construing some constitutional language in changing contexts of social science and brain science.” Will goes on to review several Court rulings that could lead one to believe that the Court will lean towards life imprisonment without parole is cruel and unusual. Will writes:
Denying juveniles even a chance for parole defeats the penal objective of rehabilitation. It deprives prisoners of the incentive to reform themselves. Some prisons withhold education, counseling and other rehabilitation programs from prisoners ineligible for parole. Denying these to adolescents in a period of life crucial to social and psychological growth stunts what the court in 2005 called the prisoner’s “potential to attain a mature understanding of his own humanity.” Which seems, in a word — actually, three words — “cruel and unusual.”