WASHINGTON, D.C. – On. Dec. 6, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Representative Karen Bass (D-CA) introduced the Second Look Act of 2022, an overhaul of the criminal justice code that allows individuals who have served at least 10 years in federal prison to petition a court to take a “second look” at their sentence. This legislation is backed by decades of research that shows that as people grow and mature, they typically age out of crime.
“The Sentencing Project has long supported ‘second look’ legislation as a vital remedy to mass incarceration. Extreme sentences produce diminishing returns on public safety and waste scarce public resources on keeping people in prison long past the time when they pose a risk to the community,” said Amy Fettig, Executive Director of The Sentencing Project.
The Second Look Act has the potential to dramatically decrease the federal prison population, which has grown from 25,000 imprisoned people in 1980 to 160,000 today. That population includes thousands of people, including many elderly and medically vulnerable individuals, who have aged out of crime and who pose little threat to the community.
“Thousands of people, most of them people of color, are behind bars due to the draconian laws enacted during the height of the failed War on Drugs,” said Senator Booker. "Many of these individuals have served lengthy prison terms, are not a threat to the community, and are ready for re-entry, but they are stuck under these archaic sentencing laws. These policies don’t make us any safer and waste valuable federal resources that could be used to invest in our communities and our future. This bill recognizes this unfairness and gives people who have served their time a ‘second look’ at their sentence.”
Under the Second Look Act, any person who has served at least 10 years in federal prison could ask a judge to review their sentence. The judge would determine whether they are eligible for a sentence reduction or release based on their history of rehabilitation, risk to public safety, and readiness for reentry. The Act would also create a rebuttable presumption of release for petitioners who are 50 years of age or older, meaning the burden would shift to the government to demonstrate why the petitioner should remain behind bars.
“I was fortunate to receive compassionate release,” said William “Bill” Underwood, a Senior Fellow at The Sentencing Project for the Campaign to End Life Imprisonment. “The judge gave me a second chance, after I served 33 years of a life without parole sentence, because I created a “culture of responsibility” in prison. But I am not unique – there are thousands of men and women in prison, many of whom are older than me – who should be able to return to their loved ones.”
In 2021, The Sentencing Project released A Second Look at Injustice, a report that outlines successful initiatives to scale back extreme sentences across the country.
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