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<font size=3>July 23, 2009<br><br>
</font><h1><font size=4><b>Study Finds Record Number of Inmates Serving
Life Terms </b></font></h1><font size=3>By
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/solomon_moore/index.html?inline=nyt-per">
SOLOMON MOORE</a><br>
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/us/23sentence.html?_r=1&hp" eudora="autourl">
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/us/23sentence.html?_r=1&hp<br><br>
</a>CORONA, Calif. Mary Thompson, an inmate at the California
Institution for Women here, was convicted of two felonies for a robbery
spree in which she threatened victims with a knife. Her third felony
under California’s three-strikes law was the theft of three tracksuits to
pay for her crack cocaine habit in 1982. <br><br>
Like one out of five prisoners in California, and nearly 10 percent of
all inmates nationally in 2008, Ms. Thompson is serving a life sentence.
She will be eligible for parole by 2020.<br><br>
More prisoners today are serving life terms than ever before 140,610
out of 2.3 million incarcerated nationally under tough mandatory
minimum-sentencing laws and the declining use of parole for eligible
convicts, according to a report released Wednesday by
<a href="http://www.sentencingproject.org/">The Sentencing Project</a>, a
corrections research and reform advocacy group. The report tracks the
increase in life sentences from 1984, when the number of inmates serving
life terms was 34,000.<br><br>
Two-thirds of prisoners serving life sentences are Latino or black, the
report found. In New York State, for example, 16.3 percent of prisoners
serving life terms are white. <br><br>
Although most people serving life terms were convicted of violent crimes,
sentencing experts say there are many exceptions, like Norman Williams,
46, who served 13 years of a life sentence for stealing a floor jack out
of a tow truck, a crime that was his third strike. He was released from
Folsom State Prison in California in April after appealing his conviction
on the grounds of insufficient counsel.<br><br>
The rising number of inmates serving life terms is straining corrections
budgets at a time when financially strapped states are struggling to cut
costs. California’s prison system, the nation’s largest with 170,000
inmates, also had the highest number of prisoners with life sentences,
34,164, or triple the number in 1992, the report found. <br><br>
In addition to California, at least one in six prisoners are serving life
terms in Alabama, Massachusetts, Nevada and New York, according to the
report.<br><br>
The California prison system is currently in federal receivership for
overcrowding and failing to provide adequate medical care to prisoners,
many of whom are elderly and serving life terms.<br><br>
Gov.
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/arnold_schwarzenegger/index.html?inline=nyt-per">
Arnold Schwarzenegger</a> this week reiterated his proposal to reduce the
inmate population through a combination of early releases for nonviolent
offenders, home monitoring for some parole violators and more lenient
sentencing for some felonies. But there are no credible plans to increase
the rate at which prisoners serving life sentences are granted
parole.<br><br>
“When California courts sentence somebody to life with parole, it turns
out that’s not possible after all,” said
<a href="http://www.law.stanford.edu/directory/profile/130/Joan%20Petersilia/">
Joan Petersilia</a>, a Stanford law professor and an expert on parole
policy. “Board of parole hearings almost never grant releases, and that’s
the reason that California’s lifer population has grown out of proportion
to other states.”<br><br>
Margo Johnson, 48, also an inmate at the women’s prison here, has served
24 years of a life sentence for a 1984 murder. She has been recommended
for release four times by the state parole board, but she said that Mr.
Schwarzenegger had rejected the board’s recommendation each
time.<br><br>
“Sometimes I wonder, is it just a game they’re playing with me?” Ms.
Johnson said.<br><br>
Seven prison systems Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Pennsylvania,
South Dakota and the federal penitentiary system do not offer the
possibility of parole to prisoners serving life terms. <br><br>
That policy also extends to juveniles in Illinois, Louisiana and
Pennsylvania. A total of 6,807 juveniles were serving life terms in 2008,
1,755 without the possibility of parole. California again led the nation
in the number of juveniles serving life terms, with 2,623.<br><br>
“The expansion of life sentences suggests that we’re rapidly losing faith
in the rehabilitation model,” said Ashley Nellis, the report’s main
author.<br><br>
Supporters of longer sentences for criminals, including victims rights
organizations, prosecutors and police associations, often cite public
safety, the deterrent effect of punishment and the need to remove
criminals from society.<br><br>
But the number of aging inmates serving life sentences has risen sharply
as the sluggish economy has shrunk state budgets. By 2004, the number of
inmates over 50 had nearly doubled from a decade earlier, to more than 20
percent, according to the report. Older inmates cost more because they
have more health needs. For example, California spends $98,000 to
$138,000 a year on each prisoner over 50, compared with the national
average of about $35,000 a year.<br><br>
But Professor Petersilia said she was skeptical that economic arguments
alone would persuade voters to treat inmates serving life terms most of
whom have committed violent felonies like murder, rape, kidnapping and
robbery with more leniency.<br><br>
“All the public opinion polls say that everybody will reconsider
sentencing for nonviolent offenders or drug offenders, but they’re not
willing to do anything different for violent offenders,” Professor
Petersilia. In fact, she added, polls show support for even harsher
sentences for sex offenses and other violent crimes.<br><br>
Burk Foster, a criminal justice professor at
<a href="http://www.svsu.edu/abs/departments/department-of-criminal-justice/faculty/d-burk-foster.html">
Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan</a> and an expert on the
Louisiana state penitentiary system, said the expansion of life sentences
started at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, the nation’s
largest maximum penitentiary, in the early 1970s, when most people
sentenced to life terms were paroled after they had been deemed fit to
re-enter society.<br><br>
“Angola was a prototype of a lifer’s prison,” said Professor Foster. “In
1973, Louisiana changed its life sentencing law so that lifers would no
longer be parole eligible, and they applied that law more broadly over
time to include murder, rape, kidnapping, distribution of narcotics and
habitual offenders.” <br><br>
Professor Foster said sentencing more prisoners to life sentences was an
abandonment of the “corrective” function of prisons. <br><br>
“Rehabilitation is not an issue at Angola,” he said. “They’re just
practicing lifetime isolation and incapacitation.”<br><br>
<br><br>
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