South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard has signed into law a bill that seeks to reform the way that state holds children accountable when they commit serious crimes. The new law is the state’s effort to comply with last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. Alabama, which found that mandatory sentences of life without parole are unconstitutional when imposed upon individuals who were younger than 18 at the time of a crime.

Senate Bill 39 allows for broad judicial discretion at sentencing because it eliminates any mandatory minimum sentence. However, the new law still keeps life without parole as a sentencing option. SB39 allows a judge to sentence a youth to any number of years up to life without parole. We are hopeful that judges in the state will utilize the full breadth of their judicial discretion under the new law in order to ensure sentences that hold youth accountable while also acknowledging their unique capacity for rehabilitation. The Supreme Court has said that life without parole sentences should become rare, noting that children are categorically different from adults and that this difference must be considered in the context of sentencing.

According to the Supreme Court, mitigating factors to be considered include specifics such as the youth’s age at the time of the crime, role in it, family background and history of abuse.

The Prisoners’ Rehabilitation & Welfare Action PRAWA joins the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth to continue

to work with other stakeholders and institutions globally that are pushing the envelopes of security and justice and seeking to advance more progressive legislation within their various criminal justice systems. More than a dozen states now in USA have active or pending legislation on sentencing youths to life without parole.

While the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth is a national coalition and clearing house that is coordinating, developing and supporting efforts to implement just alternatives to the extreme sentencing of America’s youth, with a focus on abolishing life without parole sentences for all youth, PRAWA is pushing the boundary of criminal justice reform in Africa and beyond as it collaborates with other sector stakeholders to set the agenda for change in the reforms of pre-trial justice and adoption of alternative to imprisonment in Africa, facilitating capacity building of a critical mass of personnel and institutions in the penal system to enhance the quality of rehabilitation and corrections for person in detention and prison facilities, serving as a resource centre for sustainable social entrepreneurship research and generating social development models for both rehabilitative and crime prevention purposes targeted at youths at risk, prisoners and ex-prisoners and victims of torture and galvanizing state and non –state actor to embrace non –custodial sentence that will ensure a e reduction of new imprisonments for minor offences.

Kudos to Governor Dennis Daugaard and all the people of South Dakota!