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vera institute of justice
Report Urges Capping US Prison Sentences at 20 Years to End Mass Incarceration
"Obtaining a proportional, fair system of justice will take more than just shortening sentences, but it is integral to a wholesale reimagining of public safety," says the Sentencing Project.
Feb 15, 2023
Policymakers should take steps to limit prison sentences in the United States—which incarcerates far more people than any other country and where the imprisoned population has soared 500% in recent decades—to 20 years for all crimes, a report published Wednesday by a leading criminal justice reform group argues.
"As the United States marks 50 years of mass incarceration, dramatic change is necessary to ensure another 50 do not follow," asserts the Sentencing Project report, entitled Counting Down: Paths to a 20-Year Maximum Prison Sentence. "In no small part due to long sentences, the United States has one of the world’s highest incarceration rates, with nearly two million people in prisons and jails."
The report continues:
The destabilizing force of mass incarceration deepens social and economic inequity—families lose not only a loved one, but income and childcare. By age 14, 1 in 14 children in the United States experiences a parent leaving for jail or prison. Individuals returning to the community face profound barriers to employment and housing. Meantime the communities most impacted by crime—poor communities and communities of color—disproportionately bear the burden of incarceration's impacts. Long sentences affect young Black men disproportionately compared to every other race and age group. Twice as many Black children as white children have experienced parental incarceration. Mass incarceration entrenches cycles of harm, trauma, and disinvestment and consumes funds that might support investment in interventions that empower communities and create lasting safety.
"In the United States, over half of people in prison are serving a decade or longer and 1 in 7 incarcerated people are serving a life sentence," the publication states. "To end mass incarceration, the United States must dramatically shorten sentences. Capping sentences for the most serious offenses at 20 years and shifting sentences for all other offenses proportionately downward, including by decriminalizing some acts, is a vital decarceration strategy to arrive at a system that values human dignity and prioritizes racial equity."
\u201cCreating an equitable and restorative justice system will take far more than just shortening sentences, but ending extreme sentencing is an essential step toward a fair and proportionate justice system.\u201d— The Sentencing Project (@The Sentencing Project) 1676471404
The report notes that "in countries such as Germany and Norway, periods of incarceration rarely exceed 20 years, including for homicide offenses."
While no country has yet implemented a 20-year incarceration limit, Russia caps women's imprisonment at 20 years. In Norway, prison terms are limited to 21 years, with the possibility of extensions if the inmate is deemed to pose a continued danger to society. Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian white supremacist who massacred 77 people and injured hundreds more in a pair of 2011 attacks, was sentenced to 21 years behind bars. His first parole bid was denied last year.
"In countries such as Germany and Norway, periods of incarceration rarely exceed 20 years, including for homicide offenses."
Cape Verde, Paraguay, and Portugal limit imprisonment to 25 years. Countries including Brazil, Nicaragua, Congo, Uruguay, and Venezuela have 30-year maximum sentences.
The report also aims to dispel fears that releasing violent offenders would lead to a surge in recidivism.
"Research shows that, while very serious, committing homicide is typically an isolated offense," the report states. "When individuals who commit homicides return to the community, their likelihood of committing another homicide is extremely low, typically 1-3%."
Liz Komar, sentencing reform counsel at the Sentencing Project and co-author of the report, said in a statement that "to end mass incarceration, the U.S. must dramatically shorten sentences. Lawmakers can do this by capping sentences for the most serious offenses at 20 years and shifting sentences for all other offenses proportionately downward, including by decriminalizing some acts."
\u201c\u201cMass incarceration instigates poor physical, psychological, and economic outcomes for the people who experience imprisonment, for their families, as well as for the broader community."\n\n@SentencingProj\n\nhttps://t.co/czaQAXEICz\u201d— Vanguard News Group (@Vanguard News Group) 1676139780
Sentencing Project co-director of research Ashley Nellis, who also authored the new report, said that "in large part due to long prison sentences, we have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world."
"The destabilizing force of mass incarceration deepens social and economic inequity, while entrenching cycles of harm, trauma, and disinvestment," Nellis added. "Mass incarceration also consumes funds that could instead support investments in the types of interventions that empower communities and create lasting safety."
The report recommends seven legislative reforms "to cap sentences at 20 years and right-size the sentencing structure":
- Abolish death and life without parole sentences, limiting maximum sentences to 20 years;
- Limit murder statutes to intentional killing, excluding sentences such as felony murder, and reduce homicide penalties;
- Eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing and reform sentencing guidelines to ensure that judges can use their discretion to consider mitigating circumstances;
- Provide universal access to parole and ensure timely review;
- Eliminate consecutive sentences and limit sentence enhancements, including repealing "truth-in-sentencing" and "habitual offender" laws;
- Create an opportunity for judicial "second look" re-sentencing within a maximum of 10 years of imprisonment, regardless of an individual's offense; and
- Shift all sentences downward, including by de-felonizing many offenses and decriminalizing many misdemeanors.
"Capping all sentences at 20 years is a challenging but feasible policy goal, as demonstrated by its success in other countries and a project worthy of advocates' and policymakers' attention," the report concludes. "The path to a 20-year cap will be different in every jurisdiction, but all steps offer vital hope to people serving lengthy sentences and their loved ones."
"Of course," the authors added, "obtaining a proportional, fair system of justice will take more than just shortening sentences, but it is integral to a wholesale reimagining of public safety that focuses on healthy and empowered communities, transforming prisons, investing in evidence-based prevention, and pursuing restorative alternatives to the carceral system."
A separate report published this month by the reform group Vera Institute of Justice also recommends capping U.S. prison sentences at 20 years.
\u201cHow did the U.S become the global leader in #MassIncarceration? We not only incarcerate more people than any other country\u2014but we also incarcerate people for far too long. \nVera\u2019s President and Director @NickTurner718 on seven ways to reform sentencing: https://t.co/tan1N9LXCb\u201d— Vera Institute of Justice (@Vera Institute of Justice) 1676311976
"Severe sentences do not deter crime, retribution often does not help survivors of crime heal, and the U.S. sentencing system overestimates who is a current danger to the community and when incarceration is needed for public safety," the authors argued. "Instead, we need a system that privileges liberty while creating real safety and repairing harm."
"The United States must move away from sentencing policy rooted in retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation, which the evidence shows do not deliver safety and satisfaction," the report asserts. "To reduce mass incarceration, prison sentences should be capped at 20 years for adults convicted of the most serious crimes and 15 years for young people up to age 25."
"Other sentencing reforms should include removing prior conviction sentencing enhancements, abolishing mandatory minimums, and creating second-look resentencing options for those currently behind bars," the paper adds.
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Cruelty of Solitary Detention Challenged as Obama Pushes State-Level Reform
After announcing overhaul of federal prisons' use of solitary confinement, Obama now focuses energy on pushing for more urgent state-level reforms
Apr 28, 2016
When President Obama in January announced plans to limit federal prisons' use of solitary confinement--a practice a UN expert described as "torture" and "cruel"--human rights activists applauded.
Those activists were still skeptical, however, that such a measure would reach far enough to enact meaningful change, as the vast majority of solitary confinement happens in state-level prisons. A total of about 90,000 people are imprisoned in solitary in state prisons, compared to about 10,000 incarcerated in segregated cells in federal facilities. (The nationwide total of approximately 100,000 people in solitary confinement surpasses the total prison populations of countries such as France, Japan, Germany, and the UK, as the Yale Law Journal points out.)
"Most of the battle is at the state level."
--Amy Fettig, ACLU senior staff counsel
The White House is currently urging states to adopt Obama's reforms. "Without support at state level," the Guardian notes, Obama "is stymied in his wider ambitions."
Roy Austin, the president's deputy assistant for urban affairs, justice and opportunity, and "a leading architect of the administration's drive to reduce the use of solitary confinement," as the Guardian writes, told the newspaper that the federal government understood how necessary it was to ensure states would also institute reforms.
"We know a lot of change is local," Austin said. "In the criminal justice space we represent a small percentage of the number of people arrested and incarcerated, so we are here to provide technical assistance, to learn from states that are getting it right and to serve as a shining example of what can be done."
The White House has pushed for local reform on multiple stages: it has hosted a round table discussion on the issue for state leaders and another for NGO advocacy groups, incorporated its new "guiding principles" into the National Institute of Corrections training program, and worked with organizations as diverse as the prison reform group Vera Institute of Justice in New York and national labor groups such the American Correctional Association and the Association of Correctional Administrators.
"Most of the battle is at the state level," Amy Fettig, senior staff counsel for the ACLU's national prison project, told the Guardian. "Having President Obama speak out on this issue is huge, and having the largest prison system in the country, the federal one, move to reduce solitary confinement is very meaningful, but that still leaves us having to go state by state, calling on individual jurisdictions to change."
There have been recent reports of specific cases where Obama's push for change had tangible effects. In Tennessee, for example, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on Wednesday against the Department of Children's Services and the Rutherford County Juvenile Detention Center to prevent the facility from keeping a 15-year-old boy with developmental disabilities in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day.
"The unnamed boy was ordered into confinement on April 19 by Rutherford County Juvenile Judge Donna Davenport at the request of Rutherford County detention officials, according to the lawsuit," the Tennessean reports. "He remained there 23 hours per day for two days in a cell containing only a mattress and toilet, with no access to reading materials or other activities and with the only window covered by a board."
The boy's lawyers and his mother are pushing for an end to all solitary confinement for children in the prison, citing Obama's recent push for such reforms.
Meanwhile, the Guardian reports, "Colorado has slashed the number of inmates it holds in isolation over the past five years by giving prisoners in segregation cells the chance to claw their way back to the general prison population, including via activities outside their cell, education classes and counselling. [...] At least 13 other states have already rewritten their rules or are in the process of pushing bills through their legislatures to cut down on the practice."
"We're paying twice as much a day to keep them in solitary and we're doing everything in our power to make their behavior more and more out of control--and then they get out."
--Dr. Stuart Grassian, psychologistOther states are falling behind--such as Louisiana, where Albert Woodfox, the last of the Angola Three, was released from decades of solitary confinement in February. "We've put this solitary-confinement issue before American people, before the people of the world," Woodfox said upon his release.
"Another is Texas," writes the Guardian, "where the ACLU has calculated there are 6,564 prisoners in bare concrete cells with solid steel doors. And then there is Florida, which holds more than 12,000 prisoners in segregation--more than the whole federal prison system."
And change can't come soon enough for those tens of thousands still languishing in solitary's inhumane conditions. One such prisoner in Washington state, who recently heard a radio report about Obama's efforts to limit solitary confinement, reached out to local news outlet MyNorthwest.com to share his own ordeal in solitary.
The inmate, Kyle Payment, has spent his entire adulthood in solitary confinement: currently age 30, he was first sent to solitary when he was only 18. The first time he was sent to a juvenile correction facility--which he described as a prison--he was just 11.
Payment says he's had 18 extra years added to his sentence for assaults that he committed while in solitary. He claims that he can't stop himself from being violent; he's been driven insane by his years spent in an 80-square-foot cell without any human contact.
"Payment was evaluated by psychologist Dr. Stuart Grassian, the nation's top SHU Syndrome expert, who has evaluated hundreds of inmates over the past 30 years," MyNorthwest.com reports.
"These people were so clearly ill, frightened of how ill they were," Grassian says. "Things like suicidal attempts, periods of confusion and disorientation. The symptoms they were describing were really unusual. They weren't the kind of things you see in ordinary clinical practice. Symptoms of stupor and delirium, disoriented, confused, agitated, paranoid, hallucinations in multiple spheres, feeling bugs crawling up their skin."
"This is the worst thing we could do for our community to keep ourselves safe," Grassian continued. "We're paying twice as much a day to keep them in solitary and we're doing everything in our power to make their behavior more and more out of control--and then they get out. It just makes no sense."
"I'm not innocent. I've done my fair share of wrong," Payment said. "I acknowledge that. But at the same time, I think there's a bigger scheme going on, as far as solitary confinement goes."
Indeed, an ACLU report details the vast profits being made from the nation's skyrocketing incarceration rates of the past four decades.
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