Fantastic NY Times piece on lifers

The Sunday New York Times has this terrific article by Adam Liptak, which explains why “in just the last 30 years, the United States has created something never before seen in its history and unheard of around the globe: a booming population of prisoners whose only way out of prison is likely to be inside a coffin.”  This article on lifers is a must-read, which covers a lot of important ground about life sentences and the modern politics of parole and clemency.  I was especially intrigued by some data in the article:

A survey by The New York Times found that about 132,000 of the nation’s prisoners, or almost 1 in 10, are serving life sentences. The number of lifers has almost doubled in the last decade, far outpacing the overall growth in the prison population….

Fewer than two-thirds of the 70,000 people sentenced to life from 1988 to 2001 are in for murder, the Times analysis found.  Other lifers — more than 25,000 of them — were convicted of crimes like rape, kidnapping, armed robbery, assault, extortion, burglary and arson.  People convicted of drug trafficking account for 16 percent of all lifers.

Over at TalkLeft, TChris has this post on this important topic.  And additional data on lifers can be found in last year’s potent report from The Sentencing Project discussed in this post.