New Resource: Our Life Sentences Dashboard

The Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke University School of Law has released a groundbreaking new public resource: the Life Sentences Dashboard, a comprehensive, interactive platform bringing together decades of national data on life imprisonment in the United States. The dashboard is available at: duke.is/lifesentences.

The dashboard allows people to explore trends in life sentencing across all 50 states and the federal system. It displays data from national censuses of life sentences conducted approximately every four years between 2003 and 2024, a data collection project initiated by The Sentencing Project and led by Ashley Nellis, Ph.D., who continues this work in collaboration with the Wilson Center.

“We are proud and grateful to host this data and make it available in an accessible format for the public,” said Brandon Garrett, Faculty Director of the Wilson Center. “This dashboard provides unprecedented insight into how life sentences have evolved over the past two decades, and it equips stakeholders with the tools needed to understand both national patterns and meaningful differences between states.”

Life sentences have expanded dramatically in the United States over the last twenty years, becoming a major driver of incarceration even as overall prison populations have declined.

“Having these data in one place—accessible, interactive, and easy to navigate—marks an important milestone,” said Ashley Nellis, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at American University and the lead researcher behind the national data collection effort. “For years, these numbers have helped illuminate the scale and consequences of life imprisonment. I’m glad to now make them available to the public in a way that encourages inquiry, comparison, and deeper understanding.”

Users of the dashboard can explore multiple facets of life sentences, such as the ability to:

• Examine state-by-state trends over the past two decades
• Distinguish among the types of life sentence—life without parole, life with parole, and virtual life (sentences of fifty years or more)—that drive life-sentenced populations within different states and over time
• Compare each state’s use of life sentences with broader national patterns of imprisonment
• Analyze the life-sentenced population by sex, race, ethnicity, and age of individuals serving life terms
• Download fact sheets summarizing the data from each state.

“Our goal was to create an intuitive tool that allows anyone—from seasoned researchers to concerned community members—to explore these data with clarity and confidence,” said Rita Grunberg, Ph.D., Data Scientist at the Wilson Center. “By presenting the information visually and interactively, we hope to broaden public understanding of how life sentences are used and who is most affected.”

The dashboard builds on the Wilson Center’s broader commitment to expanding empirical knowledge about sentencing.

Access the dashboard here.