People Sentenced to Life with Parole Serving Substantially Longer Prison Terms

The Sentencing Project releases its latest report entitled Delaying a Second Chance: The Declining Prospects for Parole on Life Sentences by Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Ph.D. It finds that tens of thousands of people serving life sentences eligible for release are now serving longer prison terms than their counterparts in the past.

Over the past three decades many legislatures, governors, and parole boards have toughened lifer parole policies and practices—effectively increasing prison terms for the more than 110,000 individuals serving parole-eligible life sentences. In eight jurisdictions for which data are available since the 1980s, average time served by paroled lifers with murder convictions doubled from 11.6 years for those paroled in the 1980s to 23.2 years for those paroled between 2000 and 2013.

It is noteworthy that the growth in time served among people with parole-eligible life sentences is prevalent at a time of increasing bipartisan support for criminal justice reform and given criminological evidence that as people in prison age, their risk of recidivism greatly diminishes.

The report’s findings draw on a national survey in which 31 states and the federal government provided data for available years since 1980. A supplemental document provides overviews of lifer parole policies and outcomes in each of these jurisdictions.

I urge you to share the report with your networks and to contact Nazgol, The Sentencing Project’s Research Analyst, at nghandnoosh@sentencingproject.org with questions about the report.

Regards,