Yay New Jersey

With an exploding number of kids becoming killers, more than 2,225 juveniles across the country now are serving life in prison without parole.... Because of tough state laws such as charging murder suspects as adults regardless of their age, Pennsylvania tops the nation in the number of young offenders condemned to life in prison without parole....
[Alison] Parker [from Human Rights Watch] authored a report released last fall that found that 42 states permit judges and juries to condemn juveniles to life in prison without parole, despite widespread global rejection of that penalty for young offenders. Pennsylvania leads the nation in the number of juvenile lifers, with more than 330 [and] ... 59 percent of the juveniles serving life-without-parole sentences nationally had no prior criminal convictions before being placed in prison for life, according to Parker's report....

[Advocates of reform] point to New Jersey as a model, where murder convicts face a minimum of 30 years in prison without parole. Judges then decide if the case warrants a more severe penalty based on the circumstances. While the Garden State allows juveniles to be sentenced to life in prison without parole, the Amnesty International study found no juvenile lifers there. States that don't allow life-without-parole sentences for juveniles are Alaska, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, New Mexico, New York and West Virginia; the District of Columbia also forbids them.