Late Mass Incarceration in Low-Population States: How Institutions Shape the Balance of Lifetime Punishments and Penal Reform

• In Event: Institutions and Criminal Justice Reform in the US: Promise and Peril in a "New" Era

Abstract

As state reform initiatives have swept the United States over the past decade and a half, simultaneous trends point toward increased sentence lengths for serious and violent offenses. One aspect of such bifurcation involves the expansion of life without parole (“LWOP”) and “virtual life” laws and sentences in states engaged in reform. This paper investigates a pronounced but understudied feature of LWOP expansion since the millennium: the manner in which low-population reform states in the mountain west region have used LWOP to target sex offenses—either by passing numerous laws punishing with LWOP (Nevada, Utah) or by holding more LWOP prisoners for sex offenses than for murder (Idaho, Nevada). Taking these as strategic sites for studying the bifurcation logic of late mass incarceration, I focus on how the institutions and institutional features of small states shape their policy directions, and then discuss the implications for legal and penal reform.

Author

• Christopher Seeds, University of California, Irvine