More Than 3,000 U.S. Prisoners Locked Up for Life Without Parole for Non-Violent Crimes

More Than 3,000 U.S. Prisoners Locked Up for Life Without Parole for Non-Violent Crimes
 
 
November 13, 2013  |  
 
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.
 
http://www.alternet.org/print/civil-liberties/more-3000-us-prisoners-locked-life-without-parole-non-violent-crimes