Life Sentences and Perpetual Confinement

Abstract

The past 40 years have been a time of great change in life sentencing, during which the use of life sentences has dramatically grown and the quality of life sentences has markedly hardened. The rise of life without parole in the United States is a particularly recognizable development, but life sentencing has increased worldwide, and the use of other forms of punishment that hold people in prison until death has also intensified. This article focuses on these transformations by examining several important areas in which thinking and scholarship on life sentencing have been altered and spurred by recent developments. The review concludes by pointing to gaps in the field of research and highlighting issues on which social scientific research on life sentencing has more to contribute going forward.

Life lessons: Examining sources of racial and ethnic disparity in federal life without parole sentences*

“…Coupled with the decreased use of gubernatorial clemency, these changes have fueled expansive growth in LWOP populations. Anti-death-penalty efforts have also played an important role in expanding life sentences as abolitionists have touted LWOP as a fairer, more effective, and more humane punishment than a death sentence (Appleton & Grover, 2007;Gottschalk, 2013;Seeds, 2018Seeds, , 2021. As Capers (2012, p. 169) put it, "one 2 We focus our discussion and analysis on official life sentences because they are more clearly defined and arguably carry special significance and symbolic meaning in society (Appleton & Grover, 2007); however, as we note in the Discussion section, similar findings emerge if very long sentences are included as "virtual" or "de facto" life terms.…”

“…Life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (LWOP) is one of the most distinctive and least studied aspects of the American criminal justice system (Kazemian & Travis, 2015;Ogletree & Sarat, 2012;Seeds, 2021). Although it shares similarities with long sentences and the death penalty, LWOP is a unique sanction.…”

“…Recent scholarship has argued for greater empirical attention to be directed at life sentences, recognizing their growing importance in American penology (Seeds, 2021). There are many reasons why it is especially important to study life without parole.…”

“…In federal court, for example, life without parole accounts for only a fraction of 1 percent of all sentences imposed in a given year, yet more than 6000 federal inmates-approximately 4 percent of all federal prisoners-are serving life terms (Nellis, 2021). Because LWOP ensures perpetual incarceration, critics argue it is a major impediment to modern decarceration efforts (Mauer & Nellis, 2018;Seeds, 2021).…”

“…Finally, greater research attention to life and LWOP sentences is needed, in part, because of their burgeoning popularity in American penal culture, which raises a host of broader moral and philosophical concerns. An important body of legal scholarship has argued that LWOP sentences are arbitrary, capricious, and overly harsh (Appleton & Grover, 2007;Gottschalk, 2013;Henry, 2015;Kazemian & Travis, 2015;Leigey & Schartmueller, 2019;Seeds, 2021). Other work has highlighted their perverse impacts on shifting age and mortality rates in penal institutions (Porter et al, 2016), emphasizing that "the pains of imprisonment are significantly heightened" for "life sentences" (van Zyl Smit & Appleton, 2019, p. x).…”