The Sentencing Project releases new report "Justice Delayed: The Growing Wait for Parole After a Life Sentence"

The Sentencing Project has today released to this new report titled "Justice Delayed: The Growing Wait for Parole After a Life Sentence," and that title foreshadows its findings.  Here is the start of the 24-page report's executive summary:

The number of people sentenced to life in prison has drastically increased over the last five decades.  Of the 194,803 people serving life sentences in 2024, nearly half of them, 97,160 people, were serving parole-eligible sentences. A parole-eligible life sentence is also referred to as life with parole (LWP) or life with the possibility of parole (LWPoP). Parole is the conditional release of an incarcerated individual after spending a portion of their sentence in prison.  Its purpose at inception was to serve as a bridge between an incarcerated person and their community, balancing the needs of the individual and the needs of the community, with the aim toward reintegration.

To be eligible for parole, a person sentenced to life must serve a required minimum sentence or reach their “parole eligibility date.”  The minimum parole eligibility date is the earliest point at which an incarcerated individual may be considered for parole, minus any time credits earned.  Once the required minimum sentence is served, these individuals may re-enter society upon the approval of a paroling authority, most often a parole board.  But as this report shows, over the past 50 years legislators across the country have raised the minimum sentence required for parole eligibility, delaying release of millions and significantly transforming the meaning of a life sentence.

In addition, governors have appointed parole commissioners who are reluctant to grant parole.  As a result of both factors, newly paroled life-sentenced individuals have served longer prison terms than those in years past. Furthermore, even fewer people are receiving parole hearings in recent years as political, public, and media pressures to adopt more punitive practices continue to rise.  The result: increased prison terms and prolonged punishment.