PDF Pennsylvania: Second Chances Agenda: Expand Medical Release and Create Geriatric Release Mechanisms
This document provides a summary of Pennsylvania’s need for expanded medical release and geriatric release within the justice system.
The Second Chances Resource Library contains resources related to expanding release opportunities
for people in prison who are serving long sentences or have other circumstances warranting release
This document provides a summary of Pennsylvania’s need for expanded medical release and geriatric release within the justice system.
This document gives a brief overview of the current situation in Pennsylvania regarding Life Without Parole (LWOP) Sentences and FAMM’s suggested solutions.
Speakers:
This panel took place February 17, 2022.
Speakers:
This panel took place on February 17, 2022.
This webpage provides a summary of FAMM’s current and past work surrounding Second Chance legislation in Pennsylvania.
This webinar discussed the latest research and advocacy around second look reforms. Panelists highlighted California’s prosecutor-initiated sentencing reviews, DC’s Second Look Amendment Act—impacting up to 29% of its imprisoned population, and the campaign for an Elder Parole bill in New York State.
Panelists:
Moderator: Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Senior Research Analyst, The Sentencing Project
The United States stands alone as the only nation that sentences people to life without parole for crimes committed before turning 18. This briefing paper reviews the Supreme Court precedents that limit the use of juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) and the challenges that remain to its abolition.
First, this report examines reoffending rates among people released from prison after a violent crime conviction and review research on the topic, covering both domestic and international findings. Second, it provides personal testimony from people who have left prison after a violent crime conviction. This report focuses on the outcomes of a narrow segment of the prison population: people convicted of violent crimes, including those sentenced to life and virtual life sentences, who have been released to the community through parole or executive clemency. People with violent crime convictions comprise half the overall state prison population in the U.S. They are depicted as the most dangerous if released, but ample evidence refutes this.
Findings:
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.