Additional Resources

Archival DPIC Content

• Life Without Parole News and Developments: 2003
• Life Without Parole News and Developments: 2004
• Sentencing for Life: Americans Embrace Alternatives to the Death Penalty (DPIC Report 1993)

Related Issues

• Fact Sheet on prison killings from Equal Justice USA
• A Living Death: Life without Parole for Nonviolent Offenses, American Civil Liberties Union, November 2013

From The Sentencing Project

• A. Nellis and N. Monazzam, Left to Die in Prison: Emerging Adults 25 and Younger Sentenced to Life, The Sentencing Project (June 2023).
• R. Mendel, Effective Alternatives to Youth Incarceration, The Sentencing Project (2023).
• L. Komar, A. Nellis, and K. Budd, Counting Down: Paths to a 20-Year Maximum Prison Sentence, The Sentencing Project (2023).
• A Nellis, Nothing But Time: Elderly Americans Serving Life Without Parole, The Sentencing Project (June 2022).
• J. Rovner, Too Many Locked Doors: The scope of youth confinement is vastly understated, The Sentencing Project (2022).
• A. Nellis, In the Extreme: Women Serving Life Without Parole and Death Sentences in the United States, The Sentencing Project (September 2021).
• A. Nellis, Life Goes On: The Historic Rise in Life Sentences in America, The Sentencing Project (2013).
• M. Mauer and K. Epstein, editors, To Build a Better Criminal Justice System, The Sentencing Project (2012). Features 25 essays on the future of America’s criminal justice system, written by academics, advocates, and other experts.
• A. Nellis and R. King, No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences In America, The Sentencing Project (2009). Read a summary by DPIC.
• DPIC Summary: The Sentencing Project’s Report, The Meaning of ‘Life’: Long Prison Sentences in Context (2004).

Books, Articles, and Reports

• H. Golden, Tribal courts across the country are expanding holistic alternatives to the criminal justice system, Associated Press. (August 20, 2023).
• C. Steiker and J. Steiker, The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of the Death Penalty in the United States, The Annual Review of Criminology (2020).
• R. Stokes, A Fate Worse than Death? The Problems with Life Imprisonment as an Alternative to the Death Penalty, Against the Death Penalty (2008).
• E. Beck, S. Britto, A. Andrews, In the Shadow of Death: Restorative Justice and Death Row Families (2007).
• R. Johnson and A. Dobrzanska, Mature coping among life-sentenced inmates: an exploratory study of adjustment dynamics, Corrections Compendium. (November 2005).
• A. Liptak, To More Inmates, Life Term Means Dying Behind Bars, New York Times, October 2, 2005.
• M. Lane, Is there life without parole? A capital defendant’s right to a meaningful alternative sentence, 26 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 327 (1993).