The nearly 30,000 people in California prisons serving life sentences with the possibility of parole will likely spend the rest of their lives behind bars. A 1988 law politicized the parole process by making the governor, and not parole boards, the final authority on early release for people serving life sentences with the possibility of parole.

Nancy Mullane will produce a radio documentary about men and women awaiting parole in California. The project will take listeners inside a world where people struggle to reform their lives amid diminishing hope that they will ever be granted parole.

Mullane is an independent radio reporter and producer who covers a broad range of issues, including profiles of national and local individuals, community institutions undergoing transformations, and events with an impact.  Her feature work can be heard on NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition, American Public Media's Weekend America, NPR's Latino USA, Crosscurrents, and Philosophy Talk. As part of a months-long investigation, she exposed the U.S. Army's undercounting of soldiers going AWOL and has profiled U.S. financial institutions that offer mortgages to undocumented immigrants. She has received a Brody Arts Foundation Fellowship and taught a national award-winning journalism program in San Francisco.

San Francisco, CA