NUMBER OF LIFE TERMS HITS RECORD

CORONA, Calif. -- Mary Thompson, an inmate at the California
Institution for Women here, was convicted of two felonies for a
robbery spree in which she threatened victims with a knife. Her third
felony under California's three-strikes law was the theft of three
tracksuits to pay for her crack cocaine habit in 1982.

Like one out of five prisoners in California, and nearly 10 percent
of all prisoners nationally in 2008, Ms. Thompson is serving a life
sentence. She will be eligible for parole by 2020.

More prisoners today are serving life terms than ever before --
140,610 out of 2.3 million inmates being held in jails and prisons
across the country -- under tough mandatory minimum-sentencing laws
and the declining use of parole for eligible convicts, according to a
report released Wednesday by the Sentencing Project, a group that
calls for the elimination of life sentences without parole. The
report tracks the increase in life sentences from 1984, when the
number of inmates serving life terms was 34,000.

Two-thirds of prisoners serving life sentences are Latino or black,
the report found. In New York State, for example, 16.3 percent of
prisoners serving life terms are white.

Although most people serving life terms were convicted of violent
crimes, sentencing experts say there are many exceptions, like Norman
Williams, 46, who served 13 years of a life sentence for stealing a
floor jack out of a tow truck, a crime that was his third strike. He
was released from Folsom State Prison in California in April after
appealing his conviction on the grounds of insufficient counsel.

The rising number of inmates serving life terms is straining
corrections budgets at a time when financially strapped states are
struggling to cut costs. California's prison system, the nation's
largest, with 170,000 inmates, also had the highest number of
prisoners with life sentences, 34,164, or triple the number in 1992,
the report found.

In four other states -- Alabama, Massachusetts, Nevada and New York
- -- at least one in six prisoners is serving a life term, according to
the report.

The California prison system is in federal receivership for
overcrowding and failing to provide adequate medical care to
prisoners, many of whom are elderly and serving life terms.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week repeated his proposal to reduce
the inmate population through a combination of early releases for
nonviolent offenders, home monitoring for some parole violators and
more lenient sentencing for some felonies. But there are no credible
plans to increase the rate at which prisoners serving life sentences
are granted parole.

"When California courts sentence somebody to life with parole, it
turns out that's not possible after all," said Joan Petersilia, a
Stanford law professor and an expert on parole policy. "Board of
parole hearings almost never grant releases, and that's the reason
that California's lifer population has grown out of proportion to
other states."

Margo Johnson, 48, also an inmate at the women's prison here, has
served 24 years of a life sentence for a 1984 murder. She has been
recommended for release four times by the state parole board, but she
said that Mr. Schwarzenegger had rejected the board's recommendation each time.

"Sometimes I wonder, is it just a game they're playing with me?" Ms.
Johnson said.

Seven prison systems -- Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine,
Pennsylvania, South Dakota and the federal penitentiary system -- do
not offer the possibility of parole to prisoners serving life terms.

That policy also extends to juveniles in Illinois, Louisiana and
Pennsylvania. A total of 6,807 juveniles were serving life terms in
2008, 1,755 without the possibility of parole. California again led
the nation in the number of juveniles serving life terms, with 2,623.

"The expansion of life sentences suggests that we're rapidly losing
faith in the rehabilitation model," said Ashley Nellis, the report's
main author.

De Angelo McVay, 42, is serving a life term with no possibility of
parole at the maximum security state prison in Lancaster, Calif., for
his role in the kidnapping and torture of a man.

He said in an interview Wednesday that he had used his 10 years in
prison to reform himself, taking ministry classes, participating in
the prison chapel program, becoming vice chairman of his prison yard
and avoiding behavioral demerits.

"I'm remorseful for what I did," he said. "But I got no chance at
parole, and I know guys who have committed killings and they have parole."

Supporters of longer sentences for criminals, including victims
rights organizations, prosecutors and police associations, often cite
public safety, the deterrent effect of punishment and the need to
remove criminals from society.

But the number of aging inmates serving life sentences has risen
sharply as the sluggish economy has shrunk state budgets. By 2004,
the number of inmates over 50 had nearly doubled from a decade
earlier, to more than 20 percent, according to the report. Older
inmates cost more because they have more health needs. California,
for example, spends $98,000 to $138,000 a year on each prisoner over
50, compared with the national average of about $35,000 a year.

But Professor Petersilia said she was skeptical that economic
arguments alone would persuade voters to treat inmates serving life
terms -- most of whom have committed violent felonies like murder,
rape, kidnapping and robbery -- with more leniency.

"All the public opinion polls say that everybody will reconsider
sentencing for nonviolent offenders or drug offenders, but they're
not willing to do anything different for violent offenders,"
Professor Petersilia. In fact, she added, polls show support for even
harsher sentences for sex offenses and other violent crimes.

Burk Foster, a criminal justice professor at Saginaw Valley State
University in Michigan and an expert on the Louisiana penitentiary
system, said the expansion of life sentences started at the Louisiana
State Penitentiary at Angola, the nation's largest maximum
penitentiary, in the early 1970s, when most people sentenced to life
terms were paroled after they had been deemed fit to re-enter society.

"Angola was a prototype of a lifer's prison," said Professor Foster.
"In 1973, Louisiana changed its life sentencing law so that lifers
would no longer be parole eligible, and they applied that law more
broadly over time to include murder, rape, kidnapping, distribution
of narcotics and habitual offenders."

Professor Foster said sentencing more prisoners to life sentences was
an abandonment of the "corrective" function of prisons.

"Rehabilitation is not an issue at Angola," he said. "They're just
practicing lifetime isolation and incapacitation."