https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/03/02/life-sentences-growing/

For its study, the Sentencing Project counted life sentences imposed with a chance for parole, sentences of many decades that amount to “virtual life” terms, and life sentences without parole. Life sentences without parole are “virtually unheard of elsewhere in the world,” said Ashley Nellis, the author of the study, and “imprisonment beyond 20 years is a predominantly American phenomenon.” Worldwide, the research found, 83 percent of those serving life without parole are in American prisons. Alaska is the only U.S. state that bans life without parole, the study found