Notable new report from For The People about early implementation of California’s Prosecutor-Initiated Resentencing law

I just learned about this notable new report from For The People under the title "Prosecutor-Initiated Resentencing: California’s Opportunity to Expand Justice and Repair Harm."  Here is part of the report's executive summary and key findings:

Until relatively recently, California was home to the largest prison system in the U.S. From 1975 to 2006, California’s prison population saw an 800% increase, from less than 20,000 people to 163,000, as the state built 22 of its 34 prison facilities.  Though California has enacted a series of reforms in the last decade, over 99,000 people remain incarcerated in the state’s prisons. Many of these people, disproportionately people of color, are serving excessively long sentences and could be released without posing a threat to public safety.

California’s Prosecutor-Initiated Resentencing (PIR) law (AB 2942), championed by For The People’s founder and passed in 2018, gives District Attorneys (DAs) a groundbreaking tool to directly and immediately redress the harm caused by mass incarceration and excessive sentences.  The law allows DAs to take a “second look” at past sentences that may no longer be in the interest of justice and ask the court to recall sentences and resentence people, resulting in their earlier release and reunification with family and community. 

This report looks at how specific policies led to mass incarceration in California, reviews the evidence in support of releasing people who no longer need to be incarcerated, examines the opportunity for PIR, and shares the real impacts of resentencing on people who have already been released. Finally, the report offers recommendations on implementation and opportunities for further reform.

This press release provides a partial accounting of "key report finding":

• Prosecutor-Initiated Resentencing can help mitigate racial disparities in California prisons, where 80% of those incarcerated are people of color.
• CA will spend $871 million in 2022 to house 8,465 people in prison who have served at least 10 years of their sentence. The State can redirect cost savings from incarceration to more effective resources ensuring community safety, such as trauma recovery, substance abuse treatment, and childcare.
• Nearly half (46%) of people in CA prisons have served a significant amount of their sentence (10 years).
• Based on expert analysis of recent prison data, For The People projects that 26,000 people could be safely released from California prisons over time through Prosecutor-Initiated Resentencing (PIR).
• Prosecutor-Initiated Resentencing has helped safely release more than 100 people in California to date, with hundreds of cases under review. 

And this Washington Post opinion piece by Hillary Blout, a former prosecutor who founded For The People, makes the case for Prosecutor-Initiated Resentencing (PIR) under the headline "Thousands of incarcerated people deserve to come home. Here’s how prosecutors can help." Here are excerpts with links from the original:

Beyond California, For The People has supported the passage of three laws just like the original. Today, Illinois, Oregon and Washington state have all passed laws giving prosecutors the ability to revisit old cases — and more states, including New York, Minnesota and Massachusetts, are considering PIR bills.

As this movement spreads, many may wonder, “Is this safe?”  The myth goes that long sentences are crucial to increasing public safety.  But research has shown that the length of a sentence doesn’t actually have the effect of deterring more crime.  Research also shows that people age out of crime, and that recidivism rates decline with age and are the lowest among people who have served the longest sentences for serious crimes.

The PIR process includes a meticulous review of an incarcerated person’s history, rehabilitation and in-prison behavior, as well as robust reentry planning. It also considers mitigating factors from the person’s childhood and develops safeguards for the future.  This helps ensure that our communities will be protected and even benefit from the person’s return home.

Regular readers know I am a big fan of second-look sentencing mechanisms, and some may recall that many years ago I gave a talk arguing that prosecutors should be much more involved in reviewing past sentences, which got published as Encouraging (and Even Requiring) Prosecutors to Be Second-Look Sentencers, 19 Temple Political & Civil Rights L. Rev. 429 (2010).  So I am extremely pleased to see this idea in actual practice in a growing number of jurisdictions.