ACLU: More Than 3,200 Serving Life Without Parole for Nonviolent Offenses

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. Life without parole should be reserved (if used at all) for extreme cases

By that I mean homicide with aggravating circumstances committed by a predicate violent felons, or multiple homicides over the course of some extended period of time. Point blank: Manson types and serial killers.

Instead, we toss it out at the drop of a hat, even making it mandatory for "first offense" homicides by the very young.

To even have life without parole for non-violent offenses is an outrage. This is, as another poster said upthread, pre-Enlightenment punishment - real insane shit of the "tough on crime, vengeance for the victims" mentality run amok. Add to that the number of people sentences to absurd 70 and 8- year sentences for property crimes, and we have a de facto Gulag Archipelago operating in the United States: the poor are disproportionately caught up in a punishment scheme that is fascist in quality and politically violent in intent.