Looking for broader relief and reforms for elderly prisoners in wake of Roger Stone clemency

In recent posts here and here, I have stressed the fact that Prez Trump's explained his decision to commute Roger Stone 's prison sentence in part by stressing that he "is a 67-year-old man, with numerous medical conditions" who "would be put at serious medical risk in prison" and "has already suffered greatly."  Those sound sentencing considerations could and should help justify releasing from prison many more (lower-profile) elderly offenders these days, and the latest issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter highlights the humanitarian and fiscal reasons why the aging of our prison populations was a pressing concern even well before anyone had heard of COVID-19.

I note these posts and points again because of this effective new Law360 piece headlined "After Stone Clemency, Activists Rally For Elder Parole."  I recommend the piece in full, and here are excerpts:

While Democrats and even some Republicans have questioned the ethics of Trump's decision [to commute Stone's prison term], others have highlighted how the same logic should be applied to thousands of other aging people, many of whom have actually served years and even decades of their sentences.... Roughly 288,800 people over age 50 currently live in state and federal prisons, and an estimated 70% of them have a current chronic illness or serious medical condition, according to the Alliance for Safety and Justice.

Older people make up the fastest-growing population within U.S. state and federal prisons, which have become hot spots for the viral contagion that is increasingly deadly the older its host.  A recent study found that people in prison are 550% more likely to get COVID-19 and 300% more likely to die from it.  So far, at least 625 imprisoned people have died from the virus.

Criminal justice reformers aiming to decrease the country's world-leading incarceration rate have advocated for years that aging people should be considered for early release or parole, considering the often inadequate health care available in correctional facilities as well as the fact that, generally speaking, the older you are, the less likely you are to commit another crime. Older people also cost more, per capita, to incarcerate.

Those calls have been amplified in the wake of widespread protests against racial injustice in the legal system. Last week, hundreds of New Yorkers marched in Manhattan to demand the state Legislature pass a package of bills, including one that would make people who've served at least 15 years eligible for parole at age 55. A related bill would grant parole to anyone eligible unless there is "a current and unreasonable risk" the person would break laws if released....

One of the easiest methods of releasing people, including the elderly, from dangerous prisons is the executive clemency power, which some governors have wielded more widely during the pandemic.  Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, for example, has commuted more than 20 state prisoners' sentences since March.  In his first year in office, he commuted just three sentences.  In April, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Grisham commuted the sentences of 46 people convicted for low-level crimes who were within 30 days of being released; Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt commuted 450 sentences that same month.

But while some governors have been actively exercising clemency powers, Trump's commutation for Stone marked his first since declaring a pandemic.  Stone reportedly has asthma and a history of respiratory conditions that makes him vulnerable to COVID-19; in late June, he posted social media videos saying "incarceration at a facility with COVID-19 during a pandemic is a deep state death sentence."...

Instead of granting more people clemency, Trump's response to the threat COVID-19 poses to people in prison has come via U.S. Department of Justice policies.  In March, his administration instructed the Bureau of Prisons to release more people to home detention and to consider the medical risks of holding people in pretrial detention amid rising prison COVID-19 infection counts.  According to a BOP spokesperson, 6,997 people have been placed on home confinement in response to the COVID-19 pandemic — approximately 4% of the federal prison system's 158,838-person population.

Another method of release during the pandemic has been "compassionate release," a sentence reduction typically reserved for the terminally ill or severely medically compromised.  The 2018 First Step Act, Trump's signature criminal justice achievement, made it easier to seek such releases, but only about 150 people were able to take advantage over the first 14 months of the law.  During the pandemic, that number has more than quadrupled as incarcerated people, judges and even prosecutors have mobilized to decrease prison populations, but the grand total of 776 is still a fraction of of the BOP's 158,838-person population — 20% of which is people over age 51, four months into a deadly pandemic....

Judges, for their part, have "definitely been more willing to grant compassionate release due to COVID-19," according to Amy Povah, a formerly incarcerated activist who runs Can-Do Clemency. But she added that some judges are still denying release, even in cases where people are particularly at risk of infection. "We're extremely concerned about medically compromised people who cannot socially distance in prison," she said. "They don't have the proper personal protective equipment.  Most of them, from what I understand, do not have hand sanitizer.  A lot of them are improvising by cutting up T-shirts because there's not enough masks."... Povah, who is advocating for clemency for Riojas and dozens of others, said the Stone commutation was a signal that the president is aware of the plight aging people in prison face amid the pandemic. "It gives me hope," she said.

I am not as hopeful as Amy Povah that Prez Trump is giving much thought to the plight aging people in prison face amid the pandemic.  That said, though I continue to want to (foolishly?) imagine that Prez Trump might recall the adulation he received after his clemency grant to Alice Marie Johnson and then seek some positive press by granting clemency to, say, lifer marijuana offenders assembled at the Life for Pot website.  

Wanting to be hopeful, I think about the possibility that the new bill from Senators Durbin and Grassley, the COVID-19 Safer Detention Act, could get incorporated into the latest COVID response legislation working its way through Congress.  This bill would give both BOP and federal judges broader discretion to send elderly prisoners home earlier; this authority makes sense even without an on-going pandemic and is even more important and urgent now.

A few of many prior related posts:

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