ACLU: More Than 3,200 Serving Life Without Parole for Nonviolent Offenses

[marmar]

NEW YORK – In the first-ever study of people serving life without parole for nonviolent offenses in the United States, the ACLU found that at least 3,278 prisoners fit this category in federal and state prisons combined.

"A Living Death: Life Without Parole for Nonviolent Offenses" features key statistics about these prisoners, an analysis of the laws that produced their sentences, and case studies of 110 men and women serving these sentences. Of the 3,278 prisoners, 79% were convicted of nonviolent, drug-related crimes such as possession or distribution; 20% of nonviolent property crimes like theft.

"The punishments these people received are grotesquely out of proportion to the crimes they committed," said Jennifer Turner, ACLU Human Rights Researcher and author of the report. "In a humane society, we can hold people accountable for drug and property crimes without throwing away the key."

The ACLU estimates that, of the 3,278 serving life without parole for nonviolent offenses, 65% are Black, 18% are white, and 16% percent are Latino, evidence of extreme racial disparities. Of the 3,278, most were sentenced under mandatory sentencing policies, including mandatory minimums and habitual offender laws that required them to be incarcerated until they die. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: https://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform/more-3200-serving-life-without-parole-nonviolent-offenses-finds-aclu

[Trillo]

1. How many banksters are in this list? NT

[Scuba]

2. Let me guess: Zero.

[Voice for Peace]

3. On top of the humanitarian outrageousness, is the cost of keeping people in custody.

The government should pay people to stay out of jail.
They could probably save a lot of money.

In 2007, around $74 billion was spent on corrections.[100] The total number of inmates in 2007 in federal, state, and local lockups was 2,419,241.[19] That comes to around $30,600 per inmate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States

[ieoeja]

4. "3 Strikes" laws are every bit as draconian as anything done by the Brits before the Revolution. n/t

[woo me with science]

5. The Obama administration is aggressively growing private prisons.

Last edited Wed Nov 13, 2013, 02:32 PM - Edit history (1)

Their growth is aggressively supported by both Republicans and the corporate Third Way, for one simple reason: Imprisoning human beings is a very profitable industry. But a government's complicity in attaching a profit motive to the imprisonment of human beings is nothing short of evil.

Poor minorities are worthless to corporations on the street. In prison they can bring in $40,000/yr
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023368969

Government guarantees 90% occupancy rate in private prisons.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2569173

The Obama administration is aggressively growing private prisons
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022568681

Obama's 2013 budget: One area of marked growth, the prison industrial complex
http://sync.democraticunderground.com/1002392306

Obama selects the owner of a private prison consulting firm as the new Director of the United States Marshals Service (USMS)
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/12/mars-d03.htmlPoor Land in Jail as Companies Add Huge Fees for Probation
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014158005

Private prison corporations move up on list on federal contractors, receiving BILLIONS
http://www.nationofchange.org/president-obama-s-incarcernation-1335274655

The Caging of America - Why do we lock up so many people
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002226110

Prison Labor Booms As Unemployment Remains High; Companies Reap Benefits
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/10/prison-labor_n_2272036.html

Private Prison Corporation's Letters to Shareholders Reveal Industry's Tactics: Profiting from Human Incarceration
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022665091

Financial growth of private prison industry...Profiting from caging humans.

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/BshteP8i282pcaeH8pdUsA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NTt3PTUyMA--/

This Is How Private Prison Companies Make Millions Even When Crime Rates Fall
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/09/private-prisons-occupancy-quota-cca-crime

This Is How Private Prison Companies Make Millions Even When Crime Rates Fall

—By Andy Kroll
| Thu Sep. 19, 2013 9:43 AM PDT MotherJones

We are living in boom times for the private prison industry. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation's largest owner of private prisons, has seen its revenue climb by more than 500 percent in the last two decades. And CCA wants to get much, much bigger: Last year, the company made an offer to 48 governors to buy and operate their state-funded prisons. But what made CCA's pitch to those governors so audacious and shocking was that it included a so-called occupancy requirement, a clause demanding the state keep those newly privatized prisons at least 90 percent full at all times, regardless of whether crime was rising or falling.

Occupancy requirements, as it turns out, are common practice within the private prison industry. A new report by In the Public Interest, an anti-privatization group, reviewed 62 contracts for private prisons operating around the country at the local and state level. In the Public Interest found that 41 of those contracts included occupancy requirements mandating that local or state government keep those facilities between 80 and 100 percent full. In other words, whether crime is rising or falling, the state must keep those beds full. (The report was funded by grants from the Open Society Institute and Public Welfare, according to a spokesman.)

All the big private prison companies—CCA, GEO Group, and the Management and Training Corporation—try to include occupancy requirements in their contracts, according to the report. States with the highest occupancy requirements include Arizona (three prison contracts with 100 percent occupancy guarantees), Oklahoma (three contracts with 98 percent occupancy guarantees), and Virginia (one contract with a 95 percent occupancy guarantee). At the same time, private prison companies have supported and helped write "three-strike" and "truth-in-sentencing" laws that drive up prison populations. Their livelihoods depend on towns, cities, and states sending more people to prison and keeping them there.

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. Life without parole should be reserved (if used at all) for extreme cases

By that I mean homicide with aggravating circumstances committed by a predicate violent felons, or multiple homicides over the course of some extended period of time. Point blank: Manson types and serial killers.

Instead, we toss it out at the drop of a hat, even making it mandatory for "first offense" homicides by the very young.

To even have life without parole for non-violent offenses is an outrage. This is, as another poster said upthread, pre-Enlightenment punishment - real insane shit of the "tough on crime, vengeance for the victims" mentality run amok. Add to that the number of people sentences to absurd 70 and 8- year sentences for property crimes, and we have a de facto Gulag Archipelago operating in the United States: the poor are disproportionately caught up in a punishment scheme that is fascist in quality and politically violent in intent.

[damnedifIknow]

7. We could learn much from Sweden

That's how it should be done.
Instead of building prisons they are closing prisons.

[libodem]

8. .

[indepat]

9. If only cruel and unusual punishment were both unconstitutional and

quickly vacated by legal oversight.

[davidn3600]

10. An easily exploitable population is leading to massive profits

America has a bit of an obsession with prison. The public wants conditions to be harsh, they want sentences to be long, and they really don't care about people who are in prison. When you mix that sentiment with corporations looking to make money, you get what we are starting to see. And it's very difficult to reverse this trend because politicians will be considered "soft on crime" if they advocate for prison reform.