Second Chance Successes and Reforms in 2024

America has become the world leader in mass incarceration. Despite having less than 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. has nearly 25% of the world’s incarcerated people. Approximately 1.8 million people are locked up in American jail cells, and the vast majority of those individuals are people of color. Black Americans, in particular, are imprisoned at five times the rate of white Americans.

The financial cost of keeping so many Americans in prison is incredibly high. The human cost of trauma, broken families, and lost lives is immeasurable to our families and communities. Are we at least gaining a safer society overall? The U.S. has one of the highest rates of recidivism in the world. Over 76% of formerly incarcerated individuals in America are rearrested within five years of release. Mass incarceration dehumanizes people and often makes them more desperate, leading to more crime, not less. Our justice system is overly harsh and fails to help people make better choices and rebuild their lives.

The U.S. swings back and forth between periods of “tough-on-crime” laws and criminal justice reform seemingly with every election, which makes steady progress toward decarceration hard to achieve. Thankfully, there has been some recent momentum towards achieving those goals, and they're important to keep in sight when other messages - often cloaked in fear mongering misinformation - in the political environment seem overwhelmingly loud.

Examples of Second Chance legislation/judicial activity that was passed in the United States in 2024:

• Maine - LD 1863 requires DOC to track data on grievances filed by incarcerated people about medical or mental health treatment and make that data public; track data on people released under compassionate release; and provide written information to all incarcerated people about the compassionate release process and how it works, as well as publishing that information online.

• Michigan - SB 599 allows more people to get “medically frail” release. Plus it removed a prior requirement that people on medically frail release go to a medical facility, so now people on medically frail release are able to go home.

• Massachusetts - In Commonwealth v. Mattis, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) sentences to be unconstitutional under the Massachusetts Constitution for people who were 18 to 20 years old at the time of the crime. The Court further held that this applies retroactively, which means that people currently serving LWOP in Massachusetts who were 18 to 20 at the time of the crime will be eligible for parole consideration under the time-frames that apply to people who were under 18 at the time of the crime. Sentences for people who were under 18 at the time of the crime were changed on July 25, 2014, so qualifying individuals sentenced to LWOP prior to that date will be eligible for parole consideration after serving 15 years, while those sentenced after that date will be eligible after serving 20 to 35 years, depending on the specifics of the crime. The decision does not guarantee that they will be released; it simply provides them the opportunity to go in front of the parole board, show their rehabilitation, and demonstrate that they are ready to safely return to the community.

For a list of other Second Chance criminal justice successes, you can read and download the Second Chances Successes in 2024 fact sheet from the FAMM (Families Against Mandatory Minumums) Foundation, a non-profit organization whose mission is to create a more fair and effective justice system that respects our American values of individual accountability and dignity while keeping our communities safe.