Efforts to release prisoners from long sentences draw new interest – The Mercury News

Amanda Hernández | Stateline.org (TNS)

Lawmakers across the country have considered legislation this year that would allow courts or parole boards to reevaluate a person’s long prison sentence and decide whether they can be safely released into society.

The bills, known as “second look” legislation, often focus on older populations, people sentenced as minors, or those whose crimes might have had a mitigating factor such as self-defense against domestic violence.

As America’s prison population both ages and increases, the “second look” movement has gained interest as a way to reduce overcrowding and potentially save money. Both Republicans and Democrats have sponsored the bills, but some advocates and prosecutors say the laws could retraumatize crime victims and further burden a strained court system.

Still, at least one second look bill, in Oklahoma, was signed into law this year. The new law, which is set to go into effect soon, requires judges to consider whether domestic violence was a mitigating factor in a crime. If so, a defendant would be eligible for a lighter sentence compared with the usual mandatory ranges.

“We showed that you can pass significant criminal justice reform inside a conservative state,” Republican state Rep. Jon Echols, one of the bill’s sponsors, said in an interview with Stateline. “I think we did a lot of good with the legislation we did, and I’m hoping more states follow.”

The Oklahoma law has a retroactive clause for current inmates. People who are now serving time can file a resentencing request once the law goes into effect.

Some sentencing experts and criminal justice advocates think second look legislation could draw bipartisan support because the measures aim to address prison overcrowding and overspending by releasing people who are least likely to reoffend.

“It can be a way to address excess spending,” said Liz Komar, sentencing reform counsel with The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit criminal justice research and advocacy group. “We can reinvest scarce public safety dollars from being uselessly employed to keep people who are zero risk in prison to instead prevent crime in the community.”

At least 12 states already have second look measures in place, according to the group’s legislative tracker. The existing second look laws vary, with some allowing courts to reconsider sentences based on conditions such as an offender’s age at the time of the offense and amount of time served, and others allowing prosecutors to request the court reconsider a sentence.

Some prison sentences currently include parole, which allows early release after serving part of a sentence. Those eligible for parole typically must be interviewed by a parole board and, if approved, meet certain conditions while serving the remainder of their time in the community.

But at least 17 states have abolished discretionary parole for all or most offenses, according to Campaign Zero, a nonprofit social justice organization. This means people convicted of an offense in those states will not receive a parole-eligible sentence. Some of those states, however, have enacted second look measures that could allow people to be released.

Momentum and pushback

Avenues for early release, such as clemency or compassionate release, have been around for hundreds of years. But interest in second look legislation has grown over the past five years, according to Maria Goellner, the director of state policy at Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a nonpartisan criminal justice advocacy organization known as FAMM.

Debate over second look policies has been intense. Some prosecutors, victim rights groups and family members of crime victims have voiced concerns that victims and their families could be retraumatized by the resentencing process.