California has the highest proportion of women serving life (or virtual life) sentences in state prisons–one out of every four female prisoners, according to a new fact sheetfrom the Sentencing Project. The state with the next highest rate of life imprisonment among women in prisons is Louisiana, where one in seven imprisoned women will spend her life behind bars.
Nationally, one out of every 15 of the 111,000 women in prison in the U.S. is serving life sentences. One-third of those 7,000 women are serving sentences that do not offer a chance at parole.
These numbers–as is the case with the overall number of women in prison–are on the rise, despite concurrently declining rates of violent crimes among women.
While men make up 97 percent of the lifer population in the U.S., the number of female lifers has grown exponentially over the last decade.
Between 2008 and 2016, the population of women imprisoned for violent offenses increased by 2 percent. At the same time, the number of women serving life sentences jumped 20 percent.
By comparison, the number of men serving life sentences increased 15 percent during that time.
During those same years, the number of women serving life-without-parolesentences shot up 41 percent, while the number of men sentenced to LWOP increased by 29 percent.
Across the nation, there are nearly 300 women serving life sentences for crimes they committed when they were minors. Three states are responsible for half of those life sentences: California (80 women), Georgia (23 women), and Texas (42 women).
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