Should juveniles be shackled in court or sentenced to life without parole? ABA leaders weigh in
Image from Shutterstock.
Corrected: Delegates at the ABA’s Midyear Meeting debated the ethics and utility of the practice of shackling juvenile offenders in court.
Resolution 107A, urging governments to adopt a presumption against use of these restraints and permitting judges to consider the issue after an in-person hearing, ultimately passed.
Criminal Justice Section delegate Stephen Saltzburg, a professor at George Washington University School of Law in Washington, D.C., spoke passionately against routine shackling, saying that such measures “offend the presumption of innocence.”
“It doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world that we regard as our equals in provision of justice,” he said.
Speaking in opposition—for herself only, she cautioned—was delegate Judge Lee Bussart of Lewisburg, Tennessee. The practice is rare, she said, and mitigates potential risks. And as a General Sessions Court judge who decides juvenile cases, she said, she has seen that shackling helps young offenders reconsider their behavior.
“I cannot tell you the number of times these juveniles will say to me, ‘When I sat in court in those shackles and I was treated as a criminal, I woke up and said this is not who I am and I’m not going to behave in a way that sends me back here,’ ” she said.
Two more speakers supported the measure. Though nays were audible—for the first time during Monday’s session—the resolution passed.
Also passed without opposition was Resolution 107C (PDF), also sponsored by CJS. It urges sentencing laws and procedures that recognize age and maturity as mitigating circumstances for youthful offenders. Part of the resolution called for eliminating “life without the possibility of release or parole for youthful offenders both prospectively and retroactively.”
Delegate Neal Sonnett of Florida pointed out that the United States “stands alone in permitting life without parole for juveniles.”
Correction
Updated on February 23 to correct a reference to Stephen Salzburg and the misspelling of his name.
