CADBI-West is the Western PA arm of the Coalition to Abolish Death by Incarceration. Our founding meeting was September 25 of 2017. The founding organizations are Fight for Lifers West, The Abolitionist Law Center, Let’s Get Free, HRC-Fedup and POORLAW.
We are a newer part of a statewide group that has been organizing around this issue, founded in June of 2015 in Philadelphia by Decarcerate PA, Fight for Lifers, the Human Rights Coalition, and Right to Redemption.
Pennsylvania prisons hold over 5000 people serving life sentences without the possibility of parole. In PA, a life sentence means your natural life–it is a sentence that condemns you to die in prison–which is why many choose to call it Death By Incarceration (DBI).
For more info on DBI sentences, check out our Resource Page.
OUR DEMANDS
We are working to build a mass movement both inside and outside of prison to take a stand against DBI and other harsh sentencing practices. To do this, we have established three core demands for legislative change:
- Parole eligibility after no more than 15 years;
- Presumptive parole: people are paroled at their eligibility date, unless the prison administration can prove serious unresolved disciplinary infractions;
- A maximum sentencing law that will stop the commonwealth from incarcerating people for indefinite periods of time.
