Tucked into the budget passed by the Rhode Island House and Senate is a measure that would guarantee people given a lengthy sentence for a crime committed before the age of 22 a parole hearing after serving 20 years in prison. Currently, the state’s parole guidelines do not take into consideration a person’s age at the time the crime was committed.
The budget proposed by Gov. Dan McKee would have offered parole eligibility after 10 years to anyone under 22 at the time of their crime. The revised version passed by the General Assembly doubles that time, and explicitly exempts people sentenced to life without parole. McKee is expected to sign the revised budget on Tuesday.
“For Rhode Island to go ahead and take this step, and make this policy applicable to people under age 22, we’re very grateful and excited for that,” said Preston Shipp, a policy expert with the national Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth (CFSY) who has lobbied for juvenile sentencing reform in Rhode Island.
“On the other hand, we are very disappointed that they did not abolish life without parole as a sentencing option for kids,” Shipp said. “This to me feels like a real missed opportunity for Rhode Island to join other states — diverse states like Texas, Wyoming, Utah, the Dakotas, Arkansas, West Virginia, all of which have said … ‘We’re never going to condemn a child to die in prison.’”
According to the CFSY, juvenile life without parole has been banned in 25 states and the District of Columbia but remains legal in Rhode Island, although no one in Rhode Island is currently serving life without parole for a crime committed when they were under 18.
The provision in the budget comes after advocates repeatedly tried and failed to get the General Assembly to pass juvenile parole reform. The Senate passed a bill in 2017 making juveniles eligible for a parole hearing after 15 years. But each year, the measure has been held up by the House Judiciary Committee.
“I worked on this bill for over two years with Speaker [Joe] Shekarchi,” said Rep. Julie Casimiro (D-North Kingstown), who sponsored the bill in the House. “I had to come up with something that the Speaker could live with. And we took life without parole off the table, and just made it juvenile lifers.”
Shekarchi (D-Warwick) had been a staunch opponent of the bills introduced in past years. He represents the Buttonwoods neighborhood, where 15-year-old Craig Price murdered four people in 1989. Within months, Rhode Island lawmakers used the case as justification to allow children to be tried as adults for crimes that carry a life sentence, the Providence Journal reported at the time. And Shekarchi previously invoked the case in explaining why he opposed the juvenile parole bill, despite the fact that the changes would not apply to Price.
In an interview last summer, Shekarchi said he would “keep an open mind” on the legislation.
“Rhode Island has been a tough nut to crack,” Shipp said. “There’s always going to be, you know, a case where there’s really bad facts, and sometimes that can scare lawmakers away.”
By including juvenile parole reform in the budget, lawmakers avoided a floor vote on the bill.
“It caused less controversy,” Casimiro said. “So I just think it was a good first step, and a good way to go because parole was already being addressed in the governor’s budget.”
Casimiro began pushing for juvenile parole reform after meeting Mario Monteiro, who has been incarcerated since 2001 for a murder he committed when he was 17.
Over the last six years, he and his aunt, Dee Jensen, have pulled together a coalition of advocacy organizations, researchers and lawmakers to advocate for changing the system.
“I’m thankful,” Monteiro said. “Even though it’s not, you know, what we were originally advocating for, I believe that it’s a start.”
“There’s a couple people who were 18 and 19 that the state has that are serving life without parole,” he said. “I know ’em, and I hope that someday they’ll be able to get an opportunity [to parole]. So that’s why I’ll continue working on it.”
Jensen sees the provision in the budget as “opening up the window” to continue pushing the state to eliminate life without parole sentences for juveniles.
She said she’s also glad to see that the budget includes a section instructing the Parole Board to take into consideration age and “immaturity at the time of the offense” when considering parole for people convicted as juveniles.
“It’s hope,” Jensen said. “Mario’s got hope now. I mean, that’s huge.”
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Reporter Sofie Rudin can be reached at srudin@thepublicsradio.org.
