Duke study finds race matters for those sentenced to life without parole

The steady rise in life without parole sentencing, or LWOP, makes so little sense. In general, homicides have declined for more than two decades. Death sentences have reached record lows and are now quite rare. However, LWOP sentences have reached record levels. Our study exploring why this has happened shows how local arbitrariness and racial disparities shape the use of these severe sentences.

We examined the more than 1,627 cases in which LWOP was imposed from 1995 to 2017, in North Carolina. We began by analyzing crime, race and sentence patterns by county. We found that increases in murder rates do not explain increases in LWOP sentences. In fact, counties with higher homicide rates have fewer LWOP sentences. These most-severe sentences are not imposed in direct response to the most murders.

Instead, race matters. We found that counties with more Black victims of homicide have statistically significantly fewer LWOP sentences. This is not the case for counties with more white victims of homicides. This race-of-victim effect is consistent with research on death sentencing patterns: white lives matter in our criminal courts.

Finally, some counties simply impose far more of these LWOP sentences because they seem to prefer them as a matter of muscle memory over time. Counties that have imposed LWOP sentences in the past are more likely to continue to do so.

We hope the North Carolina courts will someday directly address these patterns of inequality in the most severe sentences, short of the death penalty. Additional data concerning these cases can no doubt further unpack the problems in the use of LWOP sentences.

Many countries consider LWOP sentences a human rights violation; there should always be the possibility of rehabilitation. Nor is such rehabilitation unexpected. Most people age out of criminal offending. Older people who have served over 20 years in prison are simply unlikely to offend again. Thus, the Sentencing Project found that people who were released from life sentences were less than one-third as likely to be rearrested within three years compared to all released prisoners.

Indeed, our aging prison population in North Carolina can be traced back to the 1994 sentencing changes that also brought LWOP. COVID-19 is now a deadly threat to persons over 50, with asthma, autoimmune disorders, diabetes, heart disease. We now have more than 8,000 incarcerated people over fifty years-old.

Life without parole sentencing is very much out of line with contemporary values and current research. As we reconsider the role of racial injustice in our criminal legal system, we should look carefully at both the low level offending that does not remotely threaten public safety, but also how we treat the most severely sentenced. We should reform our sentencing laws and provide serious opportunities for “second look” reconsideration of sentences for people in prison.

Our system was never like this before and our recent experiment with sentencing people to hopeless terms, ending in death, is as biased and unfair as it is simply indecent and wrong.