Despite evidence suggesting proactive responses to youth crime are advantageous, juvenile justice relies heavily on punitive practices. This discrepancy is in part affected by public preferences for retribution, which are skewed by sensationalized media portrayals of youth crime. This experiment (N = 174) explores how youth crime media exposure translates into retributive attitudes by testing the hypothesis that media portrayals of school shootings increase retributive attitudes indirectly through either dehumanization or mortality salience. Statistical analyses suggest that dehumanization mediates the relationship between school-shooting media portrayals and retributive attitudes toward crime-involved youths. To promote support of less retributive juvenile justice policies, advocates may benefit by focusing emphasis on humanizing elements of young offenders.