The New York Times publishes an editorial, "Writing Off Lives."
The prison population in the United States has declined modestly in recent years after three decades of growth. This is partly the result of saner sentencing policies for nonviolent drug offenders, who are more likely to be given probation and drug treatment than in the past.
At the same time, however, the number of people in prison for life has more than quadrupled since 1984 and continues to grow at a startling pace. The zealous pursuit of these sentences began in the 1970s, becoming something of a fad; it is past time to revisit the practice.
A new study from the Sentencing Project, a research group, found that one in nine inmates, about 160,000 people, is serving a life sentence. Nearly one-third of these prisoners are serving life without parole. Many of these lifers were convicted of nonviolent crimes or of crimes that occurred before they turned 18.
For much of the 20th century, a sentence as harsh as life without parole was rarely used. Instead, a person sentenced to “life” — for murder, say — could be released after 15 years when the parole board determined that he or she had been rehabilitated and no longer posed a threat. This began to change during the drug war years. Harsher sentences once reserved for people convicted of capital crimes were expanded to include robbery, assault and nonviolent drug offenses. States restricted the use of parole and governors who feared being portrayed as soft on crime began to deny virtually all clemency requests.
The Sentencing Project report is, "Life Goes On: The Historic Rise in Life Sentences in America." It's available in Adobe .pdf format.
"Report: 1 prisoner in 9 in U.S. is serving life," is by Tom Brown of Reuters, via the Columbus Dispatch.
The number of prisoners serving life terms in the United States has more than quadrupled since 1984, and so-called lifers now account for 1 in 9 people behind bars, according to a report released by the Sentencing Project.The Washington-based research and advocacy group, which has long pushed for criminal-justice reforms, said in its report that nearly 160,000 people were serving life sentences in 2012, or 10.6 percent of the 1.5 million inmates being held in state or federal prisons.
“Life sentences have increased steadily over the years beginning with the first documented national census of this population in 1984,” the report said, adding that the total was up nearly 12 percent since 2008.
Nonwhites make up nearly two-thirds of the total population serving life sentences, with African-Americans accounting for nearly half, the report said.
The Sentencing Project and other groups, including the London-based International Centre for Prison Studies, say the United States leads the world in the percentage of its population behind bars.
In addition to the overall increase in the number of inmates serving life sentences, the report said there has been a 300 percent rise in the number of prisoners serving life without parole since 1984.
That same population — of lifers condemned to sentences without parole — swelled to nearly 50,000 prisoners last year, and the number has increased more than 22 percent just since 2008.
The Daily Beast coverage is, "New Sentencing Project Report Reveals Scary Increase in Life Sentences," by Eliza Shapiro.
One in every nine prisoners is serving a life sentence, with or without the option of parole, and four times as many convicts are serving life sentences today as in 1984.
Those numbers spell serious trouble for our prisons, not to mention our national moral compass, says Ashley Nellis, the author of the report and a senior research analyst at the Sentencing Project.
Prisoners get more expensive as they age, Nellis says, so taxpayers will have to shoulder the cost of a growing population of convicts who will grow old behind bars.
And sentencing more convicts than ever to die in prison means we’re turning our backs on the possibility of redemption, Nellis says. “We’re a society that believes in second chances,” she says. “That is fundamental to the American perspective.”
Culling data from corrections officials state by state, the report found 110,439 prisoners serving life sentences and 49,081 serving life without parole, meaning 159,520 people are serving out the rest of their days in American prisons.
The report reveals some disturbing trends in the current lifer prison population, Nellis says. Mirroring the general prison population, lifers are disproportionately minorities: nearly one half of the lifer population is black; one in six is Latino.
Juvenile offenders also represent a significant portion of lifers. Ten thousand people are serving life sentences for offenses they committed before they turned 18.
Diane Jennings posts, "Six percent of Texas inmates serving life," at the Dallas Morning News Crime blog.
About one in 9 inmates in prison systems across the country is serving a life sentence according to a new report from the Sentencing Project. That’s 159,520 people in 2012.
In Texas the number in 2012 was 9,031 or about 6 percent of the state prison population. More than 500 of those inmates are serving life without parole.
Nationwide, inmates sentenced in 1991 could expect to serve an average of a little more than 21 years, the Sentencing Project reports. Lifers admitted after 1997 served an average of 29 years.
Related posts are in the incarceration and sentencing category indexes.
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