PDF Montgomery v. Louisiana Six Years Later: Progress and Outliers
In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Montgomery v. Louisiana, making Miller v. Alabama’s requirement that judges consider the mitigating attributes of youth retroactive and offering new hope to thousands of people who had been sentenced to life without parole as children. For many, that hope has led to shorter prison sentences, and for hundreds of others, it’s meant freedom. At the time of the decision, 2,800 individuals in the U.S. were serving life without parole for crimes committed as children. In the six years since, 835 individuals formerly serving this sentence have been released from prison.
Today, 25 states and the District of Columbia ban life-without-parole sentences for children, and in six additional states, no one is serving life without parole for a crime committed as a child. While we celebrate this inspiring progress, we recognize that far too many others have not yet received the relief they rightfully deserve. Thus, we are pressing forward in the fight for these individuals across all areas of our work, with a particular focus on state legislatures and advocacy in outlier states. You can read more about how far we have come and the challenges we still face in this report.