Second Chances Resource Library

Nationwide one of every 15 women in prison — over 6,600 women — are serving a sentence of life with parole, life without parole, or a virtual life sentence of 50 years or more. The nearly 2,000 women serving life-without-parole sentences can expect to die in prison. Death sentences are permitted by 27 states and the federal government, and currently 52 women sit on death row. This report presents new data on the prevalence of both of these extreme sentences imposed on women.

The “violent offender” label has contributed greatly to the punitiveness of the U.S. criminal justice system. As correctional populations skyrocketed from the early 1970s to 2014, sentence length increased disproportionately for people convicted of violent crimes. This paper argues that the violent offender label poorly fits the empirical reality of violent crime, distorts notions of proportionality, fails to serve as an effective predictive tool for future violent behavior and is a serious, but often unjustified, obstacle to ending mass incarceration.

It makes the following three recommendations to policymakers: 1) curtail the use of violent offenses as a predictive tool for correctional decision-making, 2) reduce sentence lengths and time served for people with violent offenses, and 3) invest in families and communities where violent crimes are far too common.

At the state level, the power to pardon or commute a criminal sentence-that is, to grant clemency-is vested in either the Governor, an executive clemency board, or some combination thereof. Until very recently, clemency grants were a consistent feature of our criminal justice system. In the last four decades, though, state clemency grants have declined significantly; in some states, clemency seems to have disappeared altogether. This Article contends that executive clemency should be revived at the state level in response to ongoing systemic criminal justice failings. Part I describes clemency at the state level today. Despite judicial and scholarly support for the role of clemency in our criminal justice system, state clemency practice fails to live up to its theoretical justifications. Part II makes the case for a policy of vigorous clemency on both theoretical and practical grounds. Not only was clemency designed, at least in part, to serve an error-correcting function, but also, today, there are several reasons why state executive actors may be able to use their clemency power robustly without suffering politically. Part III addresses questions of implementation. If state executive actors are to pursue commutations of sentences or pardons, which inmates should be the subject of such pursuits? How can those executive actors best be insulated from political pressure? In sum, this Article argues that revitalizing state clemency is a valuable and viable component of broader criminal justice reform.

This report encourages states to use as many of the following eight strategies as possible to shorten excessive sentences:

1. Presumptive parole
2. Second-look sentencing
3. Granting of good time
4. Universal parole eligibility after 15 years
5. Retroactive sentencing reforms
6. Elimination of parole revocations for technical violations
7. Compassionate release
8. Commutation

People are spending more time in prison, and the longest prison terms are getting longer.

To better understand long prison terms, the authors of this report took a new approach to measuring how much time people spend in US prisons. They looked at annual snapshots of prison populations to see how long people had been in prison so far and compared those snapshots over time. This allowed them to include time served by people who are usually overlooked by more traditional methods.

Any amount of time spent in prison can feel long, but some terms are truly extreme. Because state policies greatly influence sentencing and release, we looked at the top 10 percent of people serving the longest prison terms in each state. We also tracked changes among people serving terms of 10 years or more. By either measure, the longest prison terms have been growing in both length and number.

As discussed in this report, the length of time served in prison has increased markedly over the last two decades. Prisoners released in 2009 served an average of nine additional months in custody, or 36 percent longer, than offenders released in 1990. Those extended prison sentences came at a price: prisoners released from incarceration in 2009 cost states $23,300 per offender–or a total of over $10 billion nationwide. More than half of that amount was for non-violent offenders.

The report also found that time served for drug offenses and violent offenses grew at nearly the same pace from 1990 to 2009. Drug offenders served 36 percent longer in 2009 than those released in 1990, while violent offenders served 37 percent longer. Time served for inmates convicted of property crimes increased by 24 percent.

Almost all states increased length of stay over the last two decades, though that varied widely from state to state.

The report also summarizes recent public opinion polling that shows strong support nationwide for reducing time served for non-violent offenders.

This article describes the origins and contours of the growing movement for justice and sentencing reform and assess its impact on the scale of incarceration to date. There are good reasons to be encouraged about these developments. However, it is also clear that at the current pace of decarceration, the cumulative effect of this movement will fall far short of what is necessary to achieve a more rational, compassionate balance in the justice system.

A key issue in assessing the decarceration trend is American sentencing policy and practice related to the length of prison terms. Defendants convicted of felonies in the U.S. are more likely both to be sentenced to prison and to serve more time in prison than in comparable nations. The excessive nature of punishment in the U.S. is not based on a rational analysis of incarceration and the fundamental objectives of sentencing policy. Moreover, unduly long prison terms are counterproductive for public safety and contribute to the dynamic of diminishing returns as the prison system has expanded.

Nearly 40 percent of the U.S. prison popu­la­tion — 576,000 people — are behind bars with no compel­ling public safety reason, accord­ing to a new report from the Bren­nan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. The first-of-its-kind analysis provides a blue­print for how the coun­try can drastic­ally cut its prison popu­la­tion while still keep­ing crime rates near historic lows.

For The People’s 2021 report is the first to examine the origins, trajectory, and impact of Prosecutor-Initiated Resentencing. Through expert analysis of prison data, this report looks at how specific policies led to mass incarceration in California, reviews the evidence in support of releasing people who no longer need to be incarcerated, examines the opportunity for PIR, and shares the real impacts of resentencing on people who have already been released. Finally, the report offers recommendations on implementation and opportunities for further reform.