USA: 53,290 PEOPLE SERVING LWOP SENTENCES

January 29, 2018:

According to a study by the Sentencing Project (Still Life: America’s Increasing Use of Life and Long-Term Sentences, May 03, 2017), there are 53,290 people serving LWOP sentences as of 2016. Most were convicted of murder.
Indeed, many thousands were convicted of nonviolent crimes, such as property offenses or drug offenses, and many were convicted of sexual assault, robbery or kidnapping. An additional 150,000 prisoners are serving life sentences, and still more are serving “virtual life sentences,” from which the prisoner will realistically never be released. As of 2016, there were 161,957 people serving life sentences. An additional 44,311 individuals are serving “virtual life” sentences, yielding a total population of life and virtual life sentences at 206,268. The pool of people serving life sentences has more than quadrupled since 1984. Nearly half (48.3%) of life and virtual life-sentenced individuals are African American. Nearly 12,000 people have been sentenced to life or virtual life for crimes committed as juveniles; of these over 2,300 were sentenced to life without parole. More than 17,000 individuals with an LWP, LWOP, or virtual life sentence have been convicted of nonviolent crimes. Within the technical category of life sentences are two classifications: life with the possibility of parole (LWP) and life without the possibility of parole (LWOP). For LWP sentences, the first opportunity for parole typically occurs after 25 or more years in prison and for LWOP, there is no chance for parole. “Virtual life sentences” do not allow parole until an individual has served as much as 50 years in prison or longer. Nearly all states allow or mandate the use of life with parole. In these cases, the government maintains the right to keep an individual in prison for the remainder of his or her life, but there is the potential for release after a certain number of years. These sentences accounted for 108,667 prisoners in 2016. Some states report disproportionately large shares of prisoners serving indeterminate life sentences, the highest among which are Utah, California, New York, Nevada, and Alabama. In Utah, for instance, more than 30 percent of state prisoners are serving LWP sentences.
Life-without-parole-sentences eliminate the possibility of release from prison except in the rare case of a clemency or commutation by the executive branch. There are 53,290 people serving LWOP sentences as of 2016. Like LWP sentences, LWOP sentences have been administered disproportionately in a handful of states: combined, Florida (16.7%), Pennsylvania (10.1%), California (9.6%), Louisiana (9.1%), and the federal system (7.2%) comprise just over half (52.7%) of the nation’s total LWOP population. In Delaware, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania more than 10 percent of the state prison population is serving a life sentence with no chance for parole. Virtual or de facto life sentences (VL) is a third category of life sentence which refers to a term of imprisonment that a person is unlikely to survive if carried out in full. There are 44,311 people serving VL sentences as of 2016. Though not considered under the technical definition of a life sentence, there are good reasons to include prisoners serving virtual life sentences in the count. With respect to offenses committed after December 1, 1987, parole has been abolished for all sentences handed down by the federal system, including life sentences, so a life sentence from a federal court will result in imprisonment for the life of the defendant, unless a pardon or reprieve is granted by the President, or if upon appeal, the conviction is quashed.
Over 3,200 people nationwide are serving life terms without a chance of parole for nonviolent offenses. Of those prisoners, 80 percent are behind bars for drug-related convictions. Sixty-five percent are African-American, 18 percent are white, and 16 percent are Latino. The ACLU has called these statistics proof of "extreme racial disparities." Nationwide, 6,781 women are serving life or virtual life sentences. This figure represents 3.5 percent of the overall life-sentenced population which is half their representation in the general prison population (7%).
All states report one or more women serving a life sentence, but two states—California and Texas—represent a considerable proportion of the national count: 19.8 percent of the country’s female lifers are in California (182 to LWOP) and another 9.9 percent are in Texas. Some of the crimes that led to life sentences include stealing gas from a truck, shoplifting, etc., but only for those with a pattern of habitual criminal offenses. A large number of those imprisoned for life had no prior criminal history whatsoever, but were given the sentence due to the aggravated nature of their crimes. Under some "three-strikes laws", a broad range of crimes ranging from petty theft to murder can serve as the trigger for a mandatory or discretionary life sentence in California. Notably, the U.S. Supreme Court on several occasions has upheld lengthy sentences for petty theft including life with the possibility of parole and 50 years to life, stating that neither sentence conflicted with the ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" in the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. An article gives us more data. “The Moral Problem of Life-Without-Parole Sentences”, by Brandon L. Garrett, professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, Time, October 26, 2017) says that States are just beginning to rethink the need for such lengthy sentences. California Gov. Jerry Brown, for example, has granted parole to thousands serving life sentences, including for violent offenses. According to a 2013 California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation report (CDCR’S Lifer Report Series, “Lifer Parolee Recidivism Report”, January 2013) recidivism among those paroled lifers has been extremely low, and “markedly” less than that of typical released prisoners. For most lifers, no lawyers will be carefully examining the facts of their cases. As the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia put it in a 2015 opinion, “The reality is that any innocent defendant is infinitely better off appealing a death sentence than a sentence of life imprisonment.” That is because convicted to life sentences are not entitled to lawyers once their appeals are over. Perhaps someday the U.S. Supreme Court will reconsider many of the mandatory life-without-parole sentences adopted in this country. Challenges continue to be brought against life-without-parole sentences for juveniles, and in its 2016 ruling in Montgomery v. Louisiana, the court held that a juvenile’s crimes must reflect “permanent incorrigibility,” and that such sentences should be reserved for only “the rarest offenders.”
The states with more prisoners serving LWOP sentences are: Florida (8,919 LWOP), Pennsylvania (5,398), California (5,090), Louisiana (4,875), Federal (3,861), Michigan (3,804), Illinois (1,609), Alabama (1,559), Mississippi (1,470), North Carolina (1,387), Virginia (1,338), Georgia (1,243), Missouri (1,144), South Carolina (1,117), Massachusetts (1,018), Oklahoma (887), Texas (798), Iowa (670), Colorado (667), Arkansas (637), Washington (622), Nevada (569), Ohio (560), Arizona (504), Delaware (435), Maryland (338), Tennessee (336), West Virginia (286), New York (275), Nebraska (265), Wisconsin (225), South Dakota (174), Minnesota (130), Idaho (126), Indiana (123), Oregon (118), Kentucky (111), New Hampshire (83), New Jersey (77), Connecticut (73), Maine (64), Utah (64), Hawaii (55), Montana (47), Wyoming (35), Rhode Island (31), North Dakota (30), Kansas (28), Vermont (14), New Mexico (1), Alaska (0, Alaska does not have life without parole in its statute).