The United States of America is one of the few nations in the world that can sentence a teenager to life in jail. These young men and women will grow old and die in jail for a mistake they made at such a young age. They will never get a chance to learn from their mistakes. These teenagers have to spend the rest of their lives in a small dirty cell. These teenagers didn’t even get the chance to enjoy their lives. They will never be able to receive a proper education, they won’t be able to spend quality time with their families, and they will never be able to have their own families. According to www.pbs.org, there are more than 2000 teens who have been sentenced to life in prison. A report made by the Washington-based advocacy group states that a teenager that is put into an adult prison is 19 times more likely to commit suicide than a normal teenager. The report also found that a teenager in an adult prison is 36 times more likely to commit suicide than a teenager in a juvenile facility. One of the main reason that teenagers shouldn’t be sentenced for life is because their brains aren’t fully developed. According to Laurence Steinberg, a development psychologist at Temple University, adolescents are more impulsive, thrill-seeking and drawn to risky decisions more than adults. Teenagers don’t focus as much on the cost and consequences of their actions as an adult would.

I think that we should consider rehabilitation rather than punishment. Rather than sending a teenager to prison for life, we should send them to a rehabilitation center where they learn the consequences of their actions and hopefully they will come out as better individuals.