Life with parole about a 20-year term, study says PRISONS

Inmates serving life with the possibility of parole in California, mostly convicted murderers, spend an average of 20 years in prison and almost never commit new crimes after being released, a new study concludes.

The report by the Stanford Criminal Justice Center at the university's law school, issued Thursday, also found that the state Board of Parole Hearings has become increasingly willing to set release dates for "lifers" in the last few years. But those dates have often been vetoed by the governor, under a voter-approved law that has parallels in only three other states, the report said.

Release rates are likely to increase, however, under Gov. Jerry Brown. Through April, Brown had overruled fewer than 20 percent of the parole dates approved by the board, which is composed mostly of former law enforcement officers and prison officials. The comparable veto rates were 70 percent for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and 98 percent for Gov. Gray Davis.

The study also found that prisoners who are denied parole must wait an average of five years for their next hearing, up from two years in 2007, mostly because of a new, voter-approved victims' rights law.

The board is less likely to approve release at an inmate's first hearing than at future hearings, the study found, and is less than half as likely to grant parole when a victim's relative attends the hearing.

The report also cited a recent study of 860 convicted murderers paroled in California since 1995. Only five had been sentenced for new felonies since then, none for crimes carrying life sentences, the study said.

The parole board, appointed by the governor, has no authority over most prisoners, who serve fixed terms based on their crimes. But it decides when lifers - those convicted of murder, attempted murder and a few other crimes, such as aggravated cases of kidnapping and rape - are suitable for release.

Starting in 2019, the board will also consider inmates sentenced to 25 years to life under the "three-strikes" law, which applies to felons with two previous convictions for serious or violent felonies. They now total one-fourth of the more than 32,000 lifers eligible for parole, the report said.

Lifers constitute one-fifth of the state's prisoners, the highest percentage of any state and an increase from 8 percent of the inmates in 1990, the study said.

In addition, California has 4,000 prisoners serving life without the possibility of parole and more than 700 sentenced to death, all for specific categories of murder, such as murder of a police officer, multiple murders and murder during a rape, robbery or burglary.

Apart from those categories, prisoners convicted of premeditated first-degree murder are eligible for parole in 25 years, and those convicted of unplanned but deliberate second-degree murder are eligible in 15 years. Both categories serve an average of 20 years before release, the study said.

The parole board now approves release in 18 percent of the hearings, three times the approval rate in 2007, the study said. It said one reason was a 2008 state Supreme Court ruling that required parole decisions to be based on the risk to public safety and not, in most cases, solely on the facts of the crime.

The study can be read at links.sfgate.com/ZLCX.