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Spotlight: Envisioning an end to ‘death by incarceration’
A new report from the Abolitionist Law Center looks at life without parole (LWOP), or “death by incarceration,” sentences in Pennsylvania. The state sends more people to prison for the rest of their lives than any other state except Florida, which has twice the population, and is one of five states that account for more than half of all LWOP sentences nationwide. Philadelphia alone has sent nearly 2,700 people to prison to die, more than any other single jurisdiction in the country. Internationally, Philadelphia’s use of LWOP sentences would exceed that of any country in the world. Across the state, over 5,300 people are serving LWOP sentences and 800 more have died in the state’s prisons since 1980. [Abolitionist Law Center]
Life without parole sentences in the state are also horrifying in their racial imbalance. While only 11 percent of Pennsylvania’s residents are Black, Black people are nearly half of those in prison and more than two-thirds of those sentenced to die in prison. Black Pennsylvanians receive this punishment 18 times more often, and Latinx Pennsylvanians five times more often, than their white counterparts. And many of those sentenced to die in prison were young when sentenced: More than half the people serving LWOP sentences in Pennsylvania were younger than 25 when they entered prison. A full quarter were sentenced before they turned 21. [Abolitionist Law Center]
The Abolitionist Law Center uses the term “death by incarceration” in its report. The authors of the report explain that “it is the preferential term selected by incarcerated people that we work with who are serving these sentences, and we are a movement-lawyering organization that is accountable to the movements we work with.” Using this term also focuses on the “ultimate fact of the sentence” and “invokes the social death experienced by the incarcerated.” Finally, use of the “death by incarceration” label, while restricted to technical life without parole sentences for purposes of the report, can also be extended to those sentences that, while not defined as ending with death, are long enough to guarantee that outcome. [Abolitionist Law Center]
The explosion of death by incarceration sentences in Pennsylvania, as elsewhere, has been the product of the transformed sentencing landscapes of the 1980s and 1990s that made punishments increasingly harsh. When people in prison launched a national strike last month, one of their 10 demands was the possibility of rehabilitation and parole for all people in prison and an end to death by incarceration sentences. [Jean Trounstine / Truthout]
In its 2017 report on life sentences, the Sentencing Project found that 1 in every 7 people in prison in the U.S. was serving a life (with or without parole) or virtual life sentence. While the pool of people serving life had quadrupled since 1984, the increase was even greater for life without parole sentences. By 2016, over 50,000 people across the country were serving live without parole. And while some have argued that LWOP has allowed for the decline in the use of the death penalty, most LWOP sentences cannot be attributed to this. As professors Jordan Steiker and Carol Steiker write, “the number of capital defendants affected by LWOP’s introduction would still be dwarfed by the number of noncapital defendants affected by its widespread adoption and use.” The vast majority of those who have received LWOP sentences in recent decades are people who would have received less, not more, harsh punishments at other times. [Sentencing Project]
The effect of life without parole sentences on the numbers of people in prison is clear. The punishment also has consequences for sentencing for less serious offenses. In his 2011 article “How Should We Punish Murder?”, Professor Jonathan Simon wrote of the “inflationary effect” that the punishments for the most serious crimes have on punishments for all other offenses. Murder, punished with death or a life sentence, Simon writes, “establishes the top of the penal scale.” And “the high price for murder, at the very least, makes it far easier to set high sentences for all manner of less serious offenses. If murderers serve 10 or 20 years, one is not likely to see repeat burglars or drug traffickers serving for decades. It follows that where murder punishments are extreme, there is the potential and perhaps an inexorable pull toward more severe punishments for all the lesser crimes; and where murder punishments are moderate, the overall array of punishments will be moderate.” [Jonathan Simon / Marquette Law Review]
In 2015, Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project cited Simon’s work in his call for a 20-year cap on prison sentences in the federal system.”[B]ecause sentencing structures are proportional,” Mauer said, “such a shift would likely reduce excessive sentences even at lower levels of offense severity.” [Marc Mauer / Sentencing Project]
The Abolitionist Law Center’s report discusses a “multi-strategy, movement-building approach” to abolish death by incarceration sentences in Pennsylvania. State legislators have introduced a bill that would make people serving life sentences eligible for parole after 15 years in prison. If passed, the legislation would make two-thirds of those serving life eligible for consideration. [Samantha Melamed / Philadelphia Enquirer] In Philadelphia, the expansion of the conviction review unit idea to encompass cases of excessive sentencing has taken root under District Attorney Larry Krasner, who ran for office on a decarceration platform and has since made clear his desire to “bring balance back to sentencing.” [Maura Ewing / Slate]
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