From the Sentencing Project (http://www.sentencingproject.org):
Six years ago, Bill Underwood, Senior Fellow at The Sentencing Project, met Senator Booker inside a federal prison.
He told him about his family, shared his story, and told him about how he was sentenced to life without parole. He explained that he had grown and changed and that he deserved to be home. He told him that he was not unique. So many people in prison deserve a second chance, and often, they never even get a first one.
He was thrilled when Senator Booker and Congresswoman Bass first introduced the Second Look Act in 2019, inspired, in part, by that meeting. He celebrated from inside a federal prison because he knew that the Second Look Act was an opportunity to have a national conversation about the importance of second chances.
Today, Senator Booker and Congresswoman Bass reintroduced the Second Look Act. He celebrates again with one big difference: He’s home. Thanks to the First Step Act, he’s now free and fighting for others to receive a second chance.
The Second Look Act is ambitious and groundbreaking. It would allow people who have served at least 10 years in federal prison to petition a court to take a “second look” at their sentence and assess their rehabilitation and whether their continued incarceration serves the interests of justice. It would create a rebuttable presumption of release for people who are 50 years of age or older, meaning the burden shifts to the government to demonstrate why that person should remain behind bars.
Extreme sentences also come with a profound human cost as people spend decades in cruel conditions, separated from their loved ones. And the research is clear: as people grow and mature, they typically stop engaging in crime. There are many reasons for this, but lengthy sentences aren’t one of them. They 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. Instead, we should be funding things that make communities safer.
He hopes you’ll join and take action to support the Second Look Act. Please contact our senators at https://secure.sentencingproject.org/a/support-second-look-act.
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