Long sentences: An international perspective

By Lila  Kazemian

  In Spring 2022, the Council on Criminal Justice launched the Task Force on Long Sentences. Its mission is to examine how prison sentences of 10 years or more affect public safety, crime victims and survivors, incarcerated individuals and their families, communities, and correctional staff, and to develop recommendations to strengthen public safety and advance justice. This brief was commissioned by the Task Force to examine how the use of long sentences in the United States compares with the sentencing practices of other countries. To the author’s knowledge, there is no existing source of comparative international data on long sentences that includes individual U.S. states and offense-specific sentences. This brief draws on the most comprehensive, publicly available data on long sentences. Key Takeaways + The use of long sentences has increased in nations across the globe over the last several decades, but the U.S. remains an outlier in the extent to which it imposes them. Both the average imposed sentence length and the actual amount of time people spend behind bars (time served) are longer in the U.S. when compared with most other countries. These findings are consistent with broader correctional trends that distinguish the U.S. from other nations. + The U.S. grapples with higher rates of homicide when compared with European countries but this does not fully explain its distinctive policies regarding long sentences. Higher homicide rates may partly explain the more frequent recourse to long sentences in the U.S., but they do not explain the longer average prison sentences imposed for homicide and sexual offenses when compared with other nations. + The U.S. imposes longer sentences compared to countries with substantially higher rates of violence. Despite having lower homicide rates than many Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries, U.S. states often incarcerate more people and for longer periods of time when compared with Latin American nations. + The average sentence length imposed in the U.S. is more aligned with the criminal justice policies of Latin American countries than with those of peer industrialized nations. Differences in average sentence length are generally less pronounced when comparing the U.S. to Latin American nations. More prominent disparities exist in comparisons with European countries. + The U.S. holds a substantial proportion of the world’s population of people serving life sentences (40%) as well as the vast majority (83%) of individuals sentenced to Life Without the Possibility of Parole (LWOP). Some U.S. state laws include provisions that allow for mandatory confinement periods that are exponentially higher than those used in European nations. + The distinctive use of long sentences in the U.S. is partly due to the decentralized structure of the political and criminal justice systems. The position of the U.S. as an outlier is exacerbated by states with distinctively large populations of people serving long prison terms.   

Washington, DC: Council on Criminal Justice, 2022. 36p.