NEW YORK (AP) – At least 2,225 juvenile offenders are serving life sentences without parole in the United States, compared to a total of 12 elsewhere in the world, two leading human rights groups said in urging the US government to abolish a practice that violates international law.

In the first-ever study to investigate the US practice of jailing youth for life in adult prisons, without the possibility of parole, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found the rate at which the sentence is imposed on children nationwide is about three times higher than it was 15 years ago.

The groups urged state and federal lawmakers to abolish the sentence, which is barred by international law and is currently practiced in only three other countries – South Africa, Tanzania and Israel.

“We’re asking for a recognition that these are child offenders and they should have access to parole hearings,” said the report’s author, Alison Parker, senior researcher with the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

“This would bring us in line with the rest of the world and make the U.S. act in accordance with human rights laws,” Parker told The Associated Press in a telephone interview, adding that such sentences are a violation of international human rights laws and reject the well-established criminal justice principle that children are less culpable than adults for the crimes they commit.

The 157-page study found 42 US states currently have laws that allow youth offenders to receive life without parole sentences for crimes they committed as juveniles. The report, entitled “The Rest of their Lives: Life without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States,” found Virginia, Louisiana and Michigan were the most aggressive in imposing the sentence on juveniles.

Out of the 154 countries for which researchers were able to obtain data, 14 countries have laws allowing for the imposition of life sentences on youth offenders.

The sentence is explicitly prohibited by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child – a treaty which only the United States and Somalia have not ratified.

The report urges state prosecutors to stop seeking life without parole sentences for juvenile offenders and to refer all youth offenders to juvenile court instead of charging them in criminal court.

While 93 per cent of youth offenders serving life sentences without parole were convicted of murder, an estimated 26 percent were convicted of felony murder, the report said.

Under that charge, anyone involved in a crime during which a death results is guilty of murder, regardless of whether they committed the killing. As a result, some juvenile offenders are being jailed for life simply for being present at the crime scene.

It found that while many of the child offenders in prison are now over 18, 16 per cent were between 13 and 15 years old when they committed their crimes.

The groups, citing a US Supreme Court ruling in March that banned the execution of juvenile offenders, said the high court found that juveniles are “categorically less culpable” than adults. Such a ruling should highlight to the American public that youth offenders should also not be subjected to a life sentence without parole, they argued.

The study also found that black youth offenders are sentenced at a rate 10 times higher than that of white youth.

It said that while fewer youth today are committing serious crimes such as murder, states are increasingly sentencing them to life without parole.

Such sentences were relatively rare up through the 1980s. But in the early 1990s, the imposition of the sentence spiked sharply, a surge largely linked to states responding to the public’s concern over juvenile “superpredators” – teens with long and violent criminal histories, the report said.

But Parker dismissed those fears as a “myth,” saying the study found many of the youth offenders serving life-without-parole did not have criminal records as long or as violent as many believed. The study found an estimated 59 percent were sentenced to life without parole for their first criminal offense.

Researchers interviewed and corresponded with 375 inmates who were sentenced as juveniles to life without parole.

“It was remarkable how they still have a strong desire to live, to rehabilitate themselves, to educate themselves. But all the odds are against them,” said Parker. “They will never be released from prison unless the laws change.”