Prison Policy Initiative sets out long list of "Winnable criminal justice reforms" for state systems
Prison Policy Initiative has produced this effective ten-page document titled "Winnable criminal justice reforms: A Prison Policy Initiative briefing on promising state reform issues for 2021." I count well over two dozen notable suggested reforms on the list, each of which comes with helpful links and additional information. Check out the whole document, and here are two of the many sentencing items to whet appetites:
Make it easier to change excessive prison sentences
Problem: Nationally, one of every six people in state prisons have been incarcerated for a decade or more. While many states have taken laudable steps to reduce the number of people serving time for low-level offenses, little has been done to bring relief to people needlessly serving decades in prison.
Solutions: State legislative strategies include: enacting presumptive parole, second-look sentencing, and other common-sense reforms, such as expanding “good time” credit policies. All of these changes should be made retroactive, and include people convicted of both violent and nonviolent offenses.
Example bill: The Second Look Act of 2019 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/2146, which proposed to allow people to petition a federal court for a sentence reduction afer serving at least 10 years.
More information: See our reports Eight Keys to Mercy: How to shorten excessive prison sentences https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/longsentences.html and Reforms Without Results: Why states should stop excluding violent offenses from criminal justice reforms https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/violence.html.
Repeal or reform mandatory minimum sentences and automatic “sentencing enhancements”
Problem: Mandatory minimum sentences and similar automatic sentencing structures like “sentencing enhancements” have fueled the country’s skyrocketing incarceration rates, harming individuals and undermining our communities and national well-being, all without significant increases to public safety.
Solutions: The best course is to repeal these laws so that judges can craft sentences to fit the unique circumstances of each crime and individual, but where that option is not possible, states should adopt sentencing “safety valve” laws, which give judges the ability to deviate from the mandatory minimum under specified circumstances.
Model and example bills: Several examples of state and federal statutes are included in Families Against Mandatory Minimums’ (FAMM) Turning Off the Spigot: How Sentencing Safety Valves Can Help States Protect Public Safety and Save Money https://famm.org/wp-content/uploads/State-Safety-Valve-Report-Turning-Off-the-Spigot.pdf; see also American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Justice Safety Valve Act https://www.alec.org/model-policy/justicesafety-valve-act/.
More information: See FAMM’s Turning Off the Spigot: How Sentencing Safety Valves Can Help States Protect Public Safety and Save Money and our Geographic Sentencing Enhancement Zones page https://www.prisonpolicy.org/zones.html.
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