EVIDENCE THAT SECOND LOOK WORKS
ILLINOIS STUDY SHOWS SECOND LOOK IS SAFE AND SAVES MONEY
From 2016 through 2019, 1,127 people who had served 10 years or more were released from Illinois prisons (an average of 376 each year). Individuals with all categories of crime-of-conviction (property, drug, sex, and violent offenses) were included in the cohort. Arrests for members of this cohort were then tracked for 30 months following their release.
In a 2022 study, this arrest data was used to calculate the effect on public safety of those releases.
The main finding: The additional arrests resulting from reductions in time served constituted a "virtually undetectable increase in the overall volume of annual arrests". Further, the likelihood of arrest for a violent offence was extremely low.
The analysis was then generalized to predict the effect on public safety if 376 people with long sentences were released early every year.
It was estimated that reducing sentence length by 30% would only increase the total annual number of arrests in the state by 0.07% (from 89,173 to 89,236 in 2020).
In 2023 the Illinois Sentencing Policy Advisory Council updated its dynamic marginal cost analysis for their incarcer-ated population. They estimated the total cost of keeping someone in state prison averaged $76,444/year, and that the mar-ginal savings from releasing one person from state prison was $11,225. Therefore, the cost savings of releasing 376 incar-cerated people per year would save taxpayers $4.2M. With a prison population of 30,144 as of 9/30/23, 376 people represent only 1.2% of the prison popu-lation, suggesting that even more substan-tial cost savings would be feasible if eligibility was increased.
ALMOST NO RECIDIVISM, $19MILLION SAVED
Starting in 2016, 174 juveniles who had been sentenced to life in prison when they were under 18 years old were resentenced and released. All had been convicted of murder. Did mayhem ensue? No. In a Monclair State University study the recidivism (re-arrest) rate for this cohort was 3.4% as of the study's publication date of April, 2020. Of the 6 people arrested, charges were dropped against 4. One person was convicted of robbery, and the other of contempt.
The releases saved Pennsylvania taxpayers an estimated $19M in the marginal cost of incarceration over the first decade.
THE REINTEGRATION OF PEOPLE SENTENCED TO LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE
In California, between 2011 and 2019, 125 people sentenced to life without parole (LWOP) were released. How many were subsequently convicted of a crime within three years? Four. One felony, one drug/alcohol misdemeanor, and two non-person, non-drug misdemeanors.