Welcome everyone - Here is what we are fighting for

 SO, WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT?

We at RJOY are a team of two extremely committed individuals who have decided to join their forces in trying to bring about some much-needed change and reform in the way WA state's present laws on the sentencing of juvenile offenders work.

One of us has long been incarcerated as a juvenile himself back in the day, and he can thus speak with all the knowledge that an insider can have on such an important and heartfelt matter. 

What exactly is at stake here? The future of our kids. While not everyone may have sympathy for the plight of incarcerated people, as the usual reply to anyone wishing to act on their behalf is usually something along the lines of 'why should I care? If they are inside, they probably deserve it', this does not help us in understanding that a kid who goes wrong and ends up doing something terrible cannot be treated the same way as an adult.

This has indeed been recently recognized by most US states, since in 2014 the Supreme Court has ruled that, in accordance with the case of Miller Vs.Alabama, it is now unconstitutional to sentence a Juvenile offender to LFWOP (life without the possibility of parole), and the decision has been made retroactive, so that most Juveniles who were sentenced to LFWOP before 2014 now have a chance at freedom after a mandatory minimum term. This decision came about as a result of the law eventually deciding to acknowledge the fact that adolescents' brains do not work the same way as adults', as it is now a proven fact that the human brain is not fully developed until around 25 years of age; which means that it simply wouldn't be right to sentence a human being to an entire life behind bars for an offense he committed when he was under 18.

So, where does this new development leave us? Today Juveniles can no longer be sentenced to LFWOP - so that they must always be considered as eligible for parole after a mandatory minimum sentence (for example, 25 years in most cases of murder). But... there is a BUT,  for a huge flaw in the WA State system has to deal with a specific offense and charge - that of Aggravated Murder when compared to First Degree Murder. This is a flaw that risks impacting the lives of Juvenile offenders all over the state, for it directly contradicts the new improvements and developments that the Supreme Court has recently decided to implement.

Read what our co-founder, D., has to say on the current state of Juvenile sentencing in WA State and what we at Rightful Justice for Our Youth are actually fighting for - see the post 'From our Founder - What we ask for'.

Thank you so much for taking action and for caring about this issue!

The RJOY Committee