How the U.S. turned away from the death penalty and toward ‘death by incarceration’

Every few years, the Sentencing Project looks at exactly who is serving life without parole, life, and what the group terms “virtual life” — what researchers deem sentences so lengthy, the prisoner will likely die behind bars. These groups make up a growing population that researcher Ashley Nellis, now a professor at American University in Washington, D.C., has been studying for more than 15 years. In addition to those who can never be paroled, there are more than 97,000 prisoners serving parole-eligible life sentences and at least 41,000 serving “virtual life.”