At about 12.40pm on 2 January 1996, Timothy Jackson took a jacket from the Maison Blanche department store in New Orleans, draped it over his arm, and walked out of the store without paying for it. When he was accosted by a security guard, Jackson said: “I just needed another jacket, man.” 
 
 A few months later Jackson was convicted of shoplifting and sent to Angola prison in Louisiana. That was 16 years ago. Today he is still incarcerated in Angola, and will stay there for the rest of his natural life having been condemned to die in jail. All for the theft of a jacket, worth $159. 
 
 Jackson, 53, is one of 3,281 prisoners in America serving life sentences with no chance of parole for non-violent crimes. Some, like him, were given the most extreme punishment short of execution for shoplifting; one was condemned to die in prison for siphoning petrol from a truck; another for stealing tools from a tool shed; yet another for attempting to cash a stolen cheque. 
 
 “It has been very hard for me,” Jackson wrote to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as part of its new report on life without parole for non-violent offenders. “I know that for my crime I had to do some time, but a life sentence for a jacket value at $159. I have met people here whose crimes are a lot badder with way less time.” 
 
 Senior officials at Angola prison refused to allow the Guardian to speak to Jackson, on grounds that it might upset his victims – even though his crime was victim-less. But his sister Loretta Lumar did speak to the Guardian. She said that the last time she talked by phone with her brother he had expressed despair. “He told me, 'Sister, this has really broke my back. I'm ready to come out.'” 
 
 Lumar said that she found her brother's sentence incomprehensible. “This doesn't make sense to me. I know people who have killed people, and they get a lesser sentence. That doesn't make sense to me right there. You can take a life and get 15 or 16 years. He takes a jacket worth $159 and will stay in jail forever. He didn't kill the jacket!” 
 
 The ACLU's report, A Living Death, chronicles the thousands of lives ruined and families destroyed by the modern phenomenon of sentencing people to die behind bars for non-violent offences. It notes that contrary to the expectation that such a harsh penalty would be meted out only to the most serious offenders, people have been caught in this brutal trap for sometimes the most petty causes. 
 
 Ronald Washington, 48, is also serving life without parole in Angola, in his case for shoplifting two Michael Jordan jerseys from a Foot Action sportswear store in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 2004. Washington insisted at trial that the jerseys were reduced in a sale to $45 each – which meant that their combined value was below the $100 needed to classify the theft as a felony; the prosecution disagreed, claiming they were on sale for $60 each, thus surpassing the $100 felony minimum and opening him up to a sentence of life without parole. 
 
 “I felt as though somebody had just taken the life out of my body,” Washington wrote to the ACLU about the moment he learnt his fate. “I seriously felt rejected, neglected, stabbed right through my heart.” 
 
 He added: “It's a very lonely world, seems that nobody cares. You're never ever returning back into society. And whatever you had or established, its now useless, because you're being buried alive at slow pace.” 
 
 Louisiana, where both Washington and Jackson are held, is one of nine states where prisoners are serving life without parole sentences for non-violent offences (other states with high numbers are Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Carolina). An overwhelming proportion of those sentences – as many as 98% in Louisiana – were mandatory: in other words judges had no discretion but to impose the swingeing penalties. 
 
 The warden of Angola prison, Burl Cain, has spoken out in forthright terms against a system that mandates punishment without any chance of rehabilitation. He told the ACLU: “It's ridiculous, because the name of our business is 'corrections' – to correct deviant behaviour. If I'm a successful warden and I do my job and we correct the deviant behaviour, then we should have a parole hearing. I need to keep predators in these big old prisons, not dying old men.” 
 
 The toll is not confined to the state level: most of those non-violent inmates held on life without parole sentences were given their punishments by the federal government. More than 2,000 of the 3,281 individuals tracked down on these sentences by the ACLU are being held in the federal system. Overall, the ACLU has calculated that taxpayers pay an additional $1.8bn to keep the prisoners locked up for the rest of their lives. 
 
 Timothy Jackson, in an old license photograph. Photograph: Jackson family 
 
 'It doesn't have to be this way' 
 
 Until the early 1970s, life without parole sentences were virtually unknown. But they exploded as part of what the ACLU calls America's “late-twentieth-century obsession with mass incarceration and extreme, inhumane penalties.” 
 
 The report's author Jennifer Turner states that today, the US is “virtually alone in its willingness to sentence non-violent offenders to die behind bars.” Life without parole for non-violent sentences has been ruled a violation of human rights by the European Court of Human Rights. The UK is one of only two countries in Europe that still metes out the penalty at all, and even then only in 49 cases of murder. 
 
 Even within America's starkly racially-charged penal system, the disparities in non-violent life without parole are stunning. About 65% of the prisoners identified nationwide by the ACLU are African American. In Louisiana, that proportion rises to 91%, including Jackson and Washington who are both black. 
 
 The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 2.3 million people now in custody, with the war on drugs acting as the overriding push-factor. Of the prisoners serving life without parole for non-violent offences nationwide, the ACLU estimates that almost 80% were for drug-related crimes. 
 
 Again, the offences involved can be startlingly petty. Drug cases itemised in the report include a man sentenced to die in prison for having been found in possession of a crack pipe; an offender with a bottle cap that contained a trace of heroin that was too small to measure; a prisoner arrested with a trace amount of cocaine in their pocket too tiny to see with the naked eye; a man who acted as a go-between in a sale to an undercover police officer of marijuana – street value $10. 
 
 Drugs are present in the background of Timothy Jackson's case too. He was high when he went to the Maison Blanche store, and he says that as a result he shoplifted “without thinking”. Paradoxically, like many of the other prisoners on similar penalties, the first time he was offered drug treatment was after he had already been condemned to spend the rest of his life in jail. 
 
 The theft of the $159 jacket, taken in isolation, carries today a six-month jail term. It was combined at Jackson's sentencing hearing with his previous convictions – all for non-violent crimes including a robbery in which he took $216 – that brought him under Louisiana's brutal “four-strikes” law by which it became mandatory for him to be locked up and the key thrown away. 
 
 The ACLU concludes that it does not have to be this way – suitable alternatives are readily at hand, including shorter prison terms and the provision of drug treatment and mental health services. The organisation calls on Congress, the Obama administration and state legislatures to end the imposition of mandatory life without parole for non-violent offenders and to require re-sentencing hearings for all those already caught in this judicial black hole. 
 
 A few months after Timothy Jackson was put away for life, a Louisiana appeals court reviewed the case and found it “excessive”, “inappropriate” and “a prime example of an unjust result”. Describing Jackson as a “petty thief”, the court threw out the sentence. 
 
 The following year, in 1998, the state's supreme court gave a final ruling. “This sentence is constitutionally excessive in that it is grossly out of proportion to the seriousness of the offence,” concluded Judge Bernette Johnson. However, she found that the state's four strikes law that mandates life without parole could only be overturned in rare instances, and as a result she reinstated the sentence – putting Jackson back inside his cell until the day he dies. 
 
 “I am much older and I have learned a lot about myself,” Jackson wrote to the ACLU from that cell. “I am sorry for the crime that I did, and I am a changed man.” 
 
 Jackson expressed a hope that he would be granted his freedom when he was still young enough to make something of his life and “help others”. But, barring a reform of the law, the day of his release will never come. ||||| Share 
 
 Excessive Sentences for Drug and Property Crimes; Extreme Racial Disparities Shown 
 
 November 13, 2013 
 
 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
 
 CONTACT: 212-549-2666, media@aclu.org 
 
 NEW YORK – In the first-ever study of people serving life without parole for nonviolent offenses in the United States, the American Civil Liberties Union found that at least 3,278 prisoners fit this category in federal and state prisons combined. 
 
 "A Living Death: Life Without Parole for Nonviolent Offenses" features key statistics about these prisoners, an analysis of the laws that produced their sentences, and case studies of 110 men and women serving these sentences. Of the 3,278 prisoners, 79 percent were convicted of nonviolent, drug-related crimes such as possession or distribution, and 20 percent of nonviolent property crimes like theft. 
 
 "The punishments these people received are grotesquely out of proportion to the crimes they committed," said Jennifer Turner, ACLU human rights researcher and author of the report. "In a humane society, we can hold people accountable for drug and property crimes without throwing away the key." 
 
 The ACLU estimates that, of the 3,278 serving life without parole for nonviolent offenses, 65 percent are Black, 18 percent are white, and 16 percent are Latino, evidence of extreme racial disparities. Of the 3,278, most were sentenced under mandatory sentencing policies, including mandatory minimums and habitual offender laws that required them to be incarcerated until they die. 
 
 "The people profiled in our report are an extreme example of the millions of lives ruined by the persistent ratcheting up of our sentencing laws over the last forty years," said Vanita Gupta, deputy legal director of the ACLU. "We must change our sentencing practices to make our justice system smart, fair, and humane. It's time to undo the damage wrought by four decades of the War on Drugs and 'tough-on-crime' attitudes." 
 
 Douglas Ray Dunkins Jr., who has served 22 years so far, told the ACLU, “It’s devastating, horrible, not being around to see [my children] graduate and go to school.” Dicky Joe Jackson, who has served 17 years, said, "I would rather have had a death sentence than a life sentence." 
 
 The federal courts account for 63 percent of the 3,278 life-without-parole sentences for nonviolent offenses. The remaining prisoners are in Louisiana (429 prisoners), Florida (270), Alabama (244), Mississippi (93), South Carolina (88), Oklahoma (49), Georgia (20), Illinois (10), and Missouri (1). The ACLU estimates that federal and state taxpayers spend $1.8 billion keeping these people in prison for life instead of more appropriate terms. 
 
 In addition to interviews, correspondence, and a survey of hundreds of prisoners serving life without parole for nonviolent offenses, the ACLU based "A Living Death" on court records, a prisoner survey, and data from the United States Sentencing Commission, Federal Bureau of Prisons, and state Departments of Corrections obtained through Freedom of Information Act and open records requests. 
 
 "A Living Death" features comments from the prisoners’ family members, and in multiple instances, prisoners’ sentencing judges express frustration and outrage at the severity of the punishment the law required. Judge Milton I. Shadur told Rudy Martinez as he sentenced Martinez to life without parole: "[F]airness has departed from the system." 
 
 The report includes recommendations to federal and state governments for changes in sentencing and clemency. The proposed policy reforms would help bring balance back to sentencing—crucial steps to reduce our nation’s dependence on incarceration. 
 
 "We must change the laws that have led to such unconscionable sentences," said Turner. "For those now serving life without parole for nonviolent offenses, President Obama and state governors must step in and reduce their sentences. To do nothing is a failure of justice." 
 
 The ACLU has placed ads online and in print to raise public awareness of the prisoners serving life-without-parole for nonviolent offenses and the larger problem of mass incarceration. Featuring photographs of six prisoners profiled in "A Living Death," the ads will appear multiple times in print and online in such national outlets as Jet, The Nation, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post. 
 
 The report is available here: 
 
 aclu.org/fairandsmart ||||| Robert Booker admits that he didn't really need the money he got from drug dealing. He grew up in a two-parent, middle-class family in Detroit in the 1970s, and his job as a lifeguard for the city's parks department paid "good money." But the drug business paid more, and by the late 1980s nearly all of his friends were showing up to the pool with new cars and expensive sneakers. "I was smarter than the average cat, and I was like, 'If they could do it, I could do it easy,'" Booker said by phone on Monday from the Federal Correctional Institution in Schuylkill, Pa. "I left lifeguarding and started hanging around." 
 
 Twenty-five years later, at 47 years old, Booker is two decades deep into a life sentence in federal prison for three related, nonviolent drug crimes: possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute crack cocaine, and operating a "crack distribution house." Although a trial judge initially sentenced him to 20 years in prison, the prosecutor filed two separate appeals, ultimately triggering an automatic sentencing mechanism that forced a federal judge to send Booker to prison for the rest of his life. 
 
 Booker has used his time in prison to study law and write fiction. He published a crime novel, "Push," in 2006. 
 
 Booker is one of more than 100 prisoners featured in an extensive new report from the American Civil Liberties Union on the rise of life sentences without the possibility of parole -- the harshest penalty faced by defendants in the American criminal justice system apart from death. Many such inmates are there "off the laws," as Booker put it, meaning they were incarcerated because of drug laws and not because they committed acts of violence. The report calculates that 3,278 prisoners were serving life without parole for drug, property and other nonviolent crimes as of 2012, comprising about 6 percent of the total life-without-parole, or LWOP, population. 
 
 The thousands of nonviolent crimes that have resulted in LWOP sentences include possession of a crack pipe, a smudge of heroin in a bottle cap, and "a trace amount of cocaine in clothes pockets that was so minute it was invisible to the naked eye and detected only in lab tests," according to the report. In each case, the defendant had previously been convicted of other crimes -- often decades-old and mostly of the non-violent variety. 
 
 Prisoners serving life without parole make up one of the fastest-growing populations in the prison system, according to the ACLU's analysis of data from the United States Sentencing Commission, the federal Bureau of Prisons and state corrections departments. The report attributes this rise partly to the prevalence of mandatory-minimum sentencing laws and other punitive drug policies embraced by lawmakers who hoped to define themselves as "tough on crime" in the '80s and '90s. 
 
 In recent years, the rhetoric that accompanied the passage of those laws has begun to shift, with legislators from both sides of the aisle introducing measures that would soften the country's approach to drug crimes. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) are just some of the more prominent figures to take up the cause in Congress, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has called for sweeping, systemic changes to a "broken" justice system, directing federal prosecutors to step away from drug cases. 
 
 Not everyone hopes to see the justice system change course. At a recent Senate hearing on overcrowding in the federal prison system, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) both applauded tough sentencing laws, crediting those policies for the precipitous decline in the country's violent-crime rates over the last few decades. "It's hard to think of a more successful domestic policy accomplished over the last 30 years than the reduction of crime rates that we have," Grassley said. 
 
 The ACLU recommends that states and the federal government abolish LWOP sentences for nonviolent offenses and reduce the sentences of prisoners who are already serving them. "Life-without-parole sentences for nonviolent offenses defy common sense, are grotesquely out of proportion to the conduct they seek to punish, and offend the principle that all people have the right to be treated with humanity and with respect for their inherent dignity," argues Jennifer Turner, the report's author. 
 
 Booker has used his time in prison to study law and write crime fiction. He works as an administrative clerk in the kitchen, where he supervises other inmates. He tells them to get a GED or learn a trade, if only to "move on the time." 
 
 He regrets that he never got to raise his children -- "never got to play the tricks on my kids that my parents played on me," he said with a laugh. He has two daughters and two sons, who were all between 1 and 3 years old when he was sent away. He hasn't seen them in six years, though he speaks with them regularly. His oldest daughter, Shaprese, is studying criminal justice at Ferris State University in Michigan. "I help her with a lot of her homework," he said. "It's a hard way to learn, to have 20 years in the system. So I think I learned a whole lot." 
 
 Below are portraits of other prisoners who, like Booker, are serving life sentences without parole for nonviolent crimes, as detailed in the ACLU's report.
– When you think of criminals who get locked away for life with no hope of parole, murderers or rapists might come to mind. But a guy who shoplifted a $159 jacket? He is one of 3,278 prisoners serving such a sentence in federal or state prisons in the US for a non-violent crime, the ACLU reports. Most are black men convicted of drug crimes who got caught up in mandatory sentencing laws because of prior convictions, says the report. It also has plenty of cases like Timothy Lee's, the now 53-year-old who got busted for stealing that jacket in 1996, reports the Guardian. Another lifer got put away for siphoning gas. The US is “virtually alone in its willingness to sentence non-violent offenders to die behind bars," says report author Jennifer Turner. The ACLU wants life sentences abolished for these types of criminals because they are "grotesquely out of proportion to the conduct they seek to punish." The Huffington Post notes that a movement is afoot to ease US drug sentences, with Attorney General Eric Holder calling for a major overhaul in the system earlier this year.