Mississippi’s Life Sentenced Population is More Than Its 1970 Prison Population
February 27, 2020
In Mississippi there are more people serving life sentences today (2,413) than the entire prison population in 1970 (1,730), according to a new fact sheet released by The Sentencing Project’s Campaign to End Life Imprisonment.
Starting in the 1970s, Mississippi’s prison population began its steady upward climb to the vastly overcrowded system we have today. While recent reforms have decreased the overall prison population by 15% between 2008 and 2016, there has been a 139% increase in life sentences. The expansion of life imprisonment is a key component in the structure of mass incarceration.
“This shocking number of people serving life sentences demonstrates Mississippi’s failure to effectively address the damaging effects that mass incarceration has had on this state,” said Nsombi Lambright, Executive Director of One Voice, a civic engagement organization based in Jackson, Mississippi. “Mississippi lawmakers, district attorneys and judges have not dealt with this issue effectively and are out of touch with common sense reform efforts to keep our communities safe and fair.”
“Mississippi prisons are in crisis,” said The Sentencing Project’s Director of Advocacy, Nicole D. Porter. “Today, officials are seeking solutions to chronically overcrowded prisons plagued by violence and inhumane conditions. Solutions must start with decarceration and scaling back the overly long sentences that make Mississippi a high incarceration state.”
Life sentences have been shown to have little effect on crime rates since people “age out” of crime—meaning that we’re spending a fortune on geriatric care to keep people in prison who pose little threat to public safety. As states pass reforms to address 40 years of prison expansion, it is clearly important to adopt sentencing reforms to dramatically reduce the scale of punishment for people serving life sentences.
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