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harlem, usa
same-gender-loving contemporary descendant of enslaved africans. community activist, feminist, health educator, independent filmmaker, mentor, playwright, poet & spiritual being. featured at, in & on africana.com, afrikan poetry theatre, angel herald, bejata dot com, bet tonight with tavis smiley, blacklight online, black noir, brooklyn moon cafe, gmhc's barbershop, klmo-fm, lgbt community services center, longmoor productions, nuyorican poets cafe, our corner, poz, pulse, rolling out new york, rush arts gallery, saint veronica's church, schomburg center for research in black culture, sexplorations, the citizen, the new york times, the soundz bar, the trenton times, the village voice, upn news, uzuri, venus, vibe, wbai-fm, wnyc-fm & wqht-fm. volunteered with adodi, bailey house, inc., black men's xchange-new york, colorofchange.org, drug policy alliance, east harlem tutorial program, imagenation film & music festival, presente.org, save darfur coalition, the enough project, the osborne association, the sledge group & your black world. worked on films with maurice jamal & heather murphy. writing student of phil bertelsen & ed bullins. mjt975@msn.com.

Wednesday, February 01, 2017

Life Parolees are serving substantially longer prison terms

the sentencing project on tuesday released its latest report entitled, delaying a second chance: the declining prospects for parole on life sentences by nazgol ghandnoosh, phd. the report found tens of thousands of people serving life sentences eligible for release are now serving longer prison terms than their counterparts.

over the past three decades many governors, legislatures and parole boards have toughened lifer parole policies and practices - effectively increasing prison terms for over 110,000 individuals serving parole-eligible life sentences.

in eight jurisdictions for which data is available since the 1980s, average time served by paroled lifers with murder convictions doubled from 11.6 years for those paroled in the 1980s to 23.2 years for those paroled between 2000 and 2013. the report studied data in arkansas, california, florida, montana, nebraska, south carolina, washington and wisconsin.

the growth in time served among people with parole-eligible life sentences is prevalent at a time of increasing bipartisan support for criminal justice reform. furthermore, given the criminological evidence which shows as people in prison age, their risk of recidivism greatly diminishes.

the report's findings draw on a national survey in which 31 states and the federal government provided data for available years since 1980. a supplement document provides overviews of lifer parole policies and outcomes in each of these jurisdictions.  

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