Wisconsin AB 895 confronts a painful reality: many people serving extreme sentences today were criminalized as children after experiencing abuse, neglect, or commercial sexual exploitation. As documented in Shared Hope International’s Just Like Me Report Card, trafficked and exploited youth are too often misidentified as offenders instead of recognized as victims—leading to sentences that ignore trauma, coercion, and a young person’s capacity for growth.

AB 895 helps correct these failures by requiring courts to consider youth-specific mitigating factors and by creating a meaningful opportunity for sentence review after long periods of incarceration. The bill does not mandate release or eliminate accountability. Instead, it restores fairness, promotes rehabilitation, and ensures survivors are not permanently punished for harm done to them as children.