[Ppnews] Record Number of Inmates Serving Life Terms

[Political Prisoner News]

July 23, 2009


Study Finds Record Number of Inmates Serving Life Terms

By 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/solomon_moore/index.html?inline=nyt-per>SOLOMON 
MOORE
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/us/23sentence.html?_r=1&hp

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.

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.

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 
<http://www.sentencingproject.org/>The Sentencing 
Project, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Gov. 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/arnold_schwarzenegger/index.html?inline=nyt-per>Arnold 
Schwarzenegger 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.

“When California courts sentence somebody to life 
with parole, it turns out that’s not possible 
after all,” said 
<http://www.law.stanford.edu/directory/profile/130/Joan%20Petersilia/>Joan 
Petersilia, 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.”

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.

“Sometimes I wonder, is it just a game they’re 
playing with me?” Ms. Johnson said.

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.

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.

“The expansion of life sentences suggests that 
we’re rapidly losing faith in the rehabilitation 
model,” said Ashley Nellis, the report’s main author.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

Burk Foster, a criminal justice professor at 
<http://www.svsu.edu/abs/departments/department-of-criminal-justice/faculty/d-burk-foster.html>Saginaw 
Valley State University in Michigan 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.

“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.”

Professor Foster said sentencing more prisoners 
to life sentences was an abandonment of the “corrective” function of prisons.

“Rehabilitation is not an issue at Angola,” he 
said. “They’re just practicing lifetime isolation and incapacitation.”




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