09 May 2017 :
The Washington Post reported the highlights of a study by the Sentencing Project: “Still Life: America’s Increasing Use of Life and Long-Term Sentences”.
According to the study, the decline in the use of the death penalty has a backlash: the number of people sentenced to life in prison has ballooned, reaching an alltime high last year, according to a report released this week from the Sentencing Project.
The report states that more than 161,000 people were serving life sentences last year, with another 44,000 people serving what are called “virtual life sentences,” defined as longterm imprisonment effectively extending through the end of a person’s life. Similar to overall prison populations, people of color are disproportionately represented; black people account for nearly half of the life or virtuallife sentences tallied in the report. 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.
The United States incarcerates people for life at a rate of 50 per 100,000, roughly equivalent to the entire incarceration rates of the Scandinavian nations of Denmark, Finland, and Sweden. Nationwide, 6,781 women are serving life or virtual life sentences.
