127,000 Lifers in America's Jails !!!
By David Rennie in Washington
"Lifers" now account for one in 11 of all those in US prisons. A quarter are serving life without parole and can expect to die behind bars.
Levels of violent crime have dropped by a third in the past decade, a trend that supporters of tough sentencing hail as proof that prison works.
But the Sentencing Project's report argued that politicians have ignored real crime trends as they vied to appear tough on offenders, and taken away important discretionary powers from judges.
The report singled out six states - Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Pennsylvania and South Dakota - where all those sentenced to life must serve without any hope of parole.
Such laws amount to a "virtual abandonment of the principles of rehabilitation that had been central to the nation's correctional philosophy", the authors of the report said.
The report singled out California's "three strikes and you're out" law as diverging from the rest of the western world. Under this, a third felony conviction, no matter how minor, can mean life.
The number in jail is now more than 2.1 million, of whom 885,000 are black, though they comprise only 12 per cent of the population.
12 October 2002: Crusade to end death penalty
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