The Economist July 10th 2021 International 57up for 60 years.
A bigger problem for reformers is that
many have argued that life without parole
is a merciful alternative to the death penal
ty. Michael Radelet of the University of Col
orado Boulder, who is a prominent oppo
nent of capital punishment, says that he is
“no fan of life without parole, but the alter
native to killing people is not killing them,
so it’s a step in the right direction.” Many
jurisdictions have swapped death for life.
Colorado replaced the death penalty last
year with mandatory life sentences with
out parole. In 2018 Benin commuted the
sentences of its last deathrow prisoners to
life. After the fall of communism many
eastern European countries replaced cap
ital punishment with life sentences.
Life after death
In places that retain the death penalty, the
possibility of life in prison can reduce its
use. In Texas death sentences “declined
precipitously” after 2005, when judges
first had the option of imposing life with
out parole instead, notes Ashley Nellis of
the Sentencing Project. Thousands of
deathrow inmates in countries that have
stopped executing people, such as Kenya
and Sri Lanka, are in effect serving life sen
tences. “Life Imprisonment” does not
count them as lifers.
Another complication is that efforts to
reduce incarceration can hurt the antilife
sentence cause. In America, where such ef
forts have bipartisan support, reforms to
shorten sentences for nonviolent crimes
have the unintended consequence of mak
ing long sentences for violent ones seem
more reasonable, says the Sentencing Pro
ject. Also, a recent rise in violent crime
could make voters less keen on leniency.
Opponents of life sentences take issue
not only with retributionminded conser
vatives but also with liberals who cheer
when rapists and racist killers are locked
away for ever. In South Africa pressure
from women’s groups led to a sharp in
crease from 1995 to 2006 in the use of life
sentences for rapists. Those who would
free the likes of Mr Tarrant after a couple of
decades are, in effect, urging their fellow
citizens to show as much empathy to the
criminal as to the victim. That is a big ask.
But not, perhaps a hopeless one. In
Louisiana, among the most punitive states
in the most punitive rich democracy, atti
tudes are changing. In 2020 the state’s jails
held nearly 6,000 prisoners serving sen
tences of 50 years or longer, a fifth of the to
tal prison population. Nearly 4,400 were
serving life without parole, which is man
datory for five offences, including “aggra
vated” rape and seconddegree murder,
which might mean driving a getaway car.
Louisiana’s version of the “three strikes”
laws introduced during a nationwide
crackdown on crime during the 1990s lets
prosecutors seek life in prison for repeat
offenders, just one of whose four crimes
needs to have been violent. One man was
put away for life for attempting to steal a
pair of hedge clippers.
Nearly half of Louisiana’s lifers are first
offenders, according to Kerry Myers of Pa
role Project, an ngoin Baton Rouge, the
state’s capital, that helps excons adjust to
freedom. Threequarters are black. In 2016
around 300 were in prison for crimes they
committed when they were children.
Until May 12th Chuck Clemons was one.
Jailed for what he describes as a “sense
less” murder he committed when he was
17, he served 44 years in Angola, a maxi
mumsecurity lockup larger than Man
hattan that houses 6,300 inmates, nearly
threequarters of them lifers. Tall and soft
spoken, with a scholarly mien accentuated
by goldrimmed spectacles, he was not
crushed by his ordeal. “What kept me go
ing”, he says, was baking. He rose at
11:30pm on workdays to confect bread rolls
and such treats as banana pudding and pe
can pie for 800900 prisoners at a time.
But there were sorrows. He watched
from afar as his sister married and bore
children. He could not bear his nephew to
visit him. “Just watching [members of my
family] leave and knowing that I got to go
back there, I wasn’t strong enough to take
that,” he says. His mother, with whom he is
now reunited, has Alzheimer’s. His father
died of covid19.
Mr Clemons’s release is a sign that
things in Louisiana, and America, may be
changing. In a string of decisions since
2010, America’s Supreme Court has ruled
that mandatory life sentences without pa
role for juveniles are unconstitutional,
forcing states to reconsider whether peo
ple locked up for crimes they committed as
children needed to remain so. Louisiana
has released 78 juvenile lifers, starting in
2016 with Andrew Hundley, now Parole
Project’s director, who was jailed for killing
a girl when he was 15.
Louisiana has other reasons to free prisoners who appear to pose no threat. Its in
carceration rate of 980 per 100,000 people
in 2018 was the highest in the country.
Spending on the penal system, some
$700m a year, is one of the biggest items in
the budget. In 2017, with bipartisan sup
port, the state enacted a package of laws to
reduce its prison population. The number
of prisoners has dropped by about a quar
ter since 2017.
Despite such advances, life without pa
role is still entrenched in Louisiana’s law,
says Mr Myers. Prosecutors like draconian
penalties. The threat of them makes it easi
er to secure convictions via plea bargains;
suspects often admit to a lesser crime rath
er than face trial for a more serious one and
the possibility of being locked up for ever.
Mr Myers claims that politicians do what
the prosecutors want.
Prosecutors merely execute the laws,
retorts Loren Lampert of Louisiana’s Dis
trict Attorneys Association. Still, he thinks
mandatory life sentences for murder and
aggravated rape protect potential victims.
Even a few children deserve such a punish
ment. Some cases “are so heinous, so atro
cious, so aggravated that they merit that
distinction of the worst of the worst,” he
says. Parole hearings can force victims to
“relive the most horrible event of their en
tire lives every two years”.Changing tack
Some Louisianans are trying a new ap
proach. Two businessmen and a lawyer re
cently founded the Second Look Alliance,
which aims to cut the prison population,
starting with a campaign to end mandatory
life sentences without parole for second
degree murder. Legislative lobbying has
gone as far as it can, says its executive di
rector, Preston Robinson. The next phase
requires “changing the hearts and minds of
the public”, especially moderate and con
servative voters.
He thinks three messageswill resonate
with them: that Louisiana’s large popula
tion of lifers makes it an “outlier” even inIt’s my life
United StatesSource:TheSentencingProject *Sentencesof 50 yearsorlongerbeforeanopportunity for parole250200150100500
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parole-40 -10-20-30 100Changeinlife-sentenced
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1andolder Under1100806040200Crime of conviction among
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