As the median age of prisoners continues to increase nationally and if current sentencing trends continue, eventually there will be many more long-termers. Of the 31 men at Angola, 27 are black and 4 are white; 17 were convicted of murder and 14 of aggravated rape. Four reasons emerge, from prison records and interviews with the prisoners, to explain why they did not win earlier release: an early record of frequent and serious prison misconduct; opposition to prisoner release by the victim, community, court, or law enforcement; lack of outside assistance; and lack of serious effort on the part of the prisoner to secure his release. However, most of the long-termers have also been model prisoners during the last 10 to 15 years of their confinement. As the long-termers age, they have been given more freedom of movement and responsibility. For various reasons, most of the long-termers have accepted their life sentences and stopped trying to work through the system. 3 references