El Salvador Allows Life Sentences for Minors as Young as 12

Right narrative

El Salvador's push for life sentences — even for minors — is a direct response to the decades of gang terror that left a quarter of a million dead and missing. Lenient juvenile laws did not protect the country's children, but rather turned them into weapons for gangs who exploited those protections to commit heinous crimes with near impunity. Reform, therefore, isn't cruelty, but essential to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.