Prison Reform Bill Brings Change to Criminal Law

The latest attempt in Harrisburg to reduce the state prison population by changing criminal law is being welcomed by judges and other people involved in the criminal justice system.

Governor Tom Corbett signed Senate Bill 100, also known as the Criminal Justice Reform Act, into law on Thursday.

Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas Judge William R. Carpenter, the administrative judge of that court’s criminal division, said the legislation is indicative of “the general principles of combining the appropriate punishment with the appropriate treatment. [This legislation is] expanding that theory, which I’m totally in favor of.”

Among the several changes that the bill enacted are:

• Expanding the eligibility for state intermediate punishment, a program for nonviolent offenders convicted of an offense “motivated by the use of or addiction” to drugs and alcohol.
   
• Making it the default that parolees are returned to community corrections centers, rather than state prison, for most parole violations.
   
• Banning defendants convicted of certain misdemeanors from serving their sentences in state prison.
   
• Eliminating pre-release for inmates into halfway houses who are within one year of their maximum sentences.
   
• Requiring reinvestment of any savings from reducing the prison population to create a risk-assessment tool for judges when sentencing defendants, to fund local law enforcement and to incentivize judicial districts to divert defendants to county jails through programming such as treatment courts.
   
• Raising the age of eligibility for boot camp from 35 to 40.

“Many states have been moving in this general direction, which is to more intelligent sentencing and supervising [of] offenders” based upon their individual characteristics, Carpenter said.

Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Sheila Woods-Skipper, the supervising judge of the criminal section of the trial division, said the legislation acknowledges that offenders who are not serving life sentences are going to be re-entering society. The legislation also aims to provide them with tools to reduce their recidivism, Woods-Skipper said.

John E. Wetzel, secretary of the Department of Corrections, said the legislation is based on objective empirical data, and that is why he thinks the legislation had support in the General Assembly, which is controlled by Republican majorities.

While many states have enacted legislation to reform criminal law and address their prison populations, Pennsylvania might be the first state in the country where the vote in both chambers was unanimous, Wetzel said.

“To really put yourself out there and make significant changes to the system is politically risky,” Wetzel said. “The fact that Governor Corbett led this effort and his credibility for the law enforcement perspective … that certainly made things different,” Wetzel said.

Pennsylvania citizens are not getting what they want out of the criminal justice system when more than 40 percent of offenders are coming back into state prison, Wetzel said.

When asked why the legislation had advanced when Republicans are known for their law-and-order stance, State Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery, said “I think it’s fair to say the Republicans are in favor of an efficient system that works and that is just.”

The current system is “out-of-control financially and a complete failure with violent crime going up all the time” and with over 40 percent of former state prisoners committing new crimes and being reimprisoned, Greenleaf said.

“Punishment without rehabilitation is a failure,” Greenleaf said. “The whole penal system set up under the Quakers, William Penn, was to provide rehabilitation.”

Varying estimates suggest that the legislation could save the state $200 million to $300 million, Greenleaf said.

Greg Rowe, chief of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office’s legislation unit and the legislative liaison for the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, said legislation negotiations “gave a lot of people comfort” because the Corbett administration invested time in meetings that included the Judiciary Committee majority and minority chairs of the House of Representatives and the Senate as well as other stakeholders across the spectrum in the criminal justice system; because the legislation was influenced by data that tracked the factors that drive Pennsylvania’s prison population; and because Corbett is strong on public safety.

The District Attorneys Association supported the legislation.

“They didn’t go into the sentencing code and reduce sentences and let people out early for the sake of letting people out early,” Rowe said. Instead, the legislation gives the Department of Corrections flexibility on how to handle people who are already sentenced, Rowe said.

Wetzel said it was important that the justice reinvestment initiative would fund the development of a risk-based sentencing tool to provide judges a risk assessment on whether a defendant would reoffend.

The tool was never funded, Wetzel said.

“The better and more information judges have, the better placement they can make,” Wetzel said. “That is getting funded through the reinvestment piece.”

Rowe said the biggest change in the legislation is how parole violations will be handled.

Many states that make it their default to not return parolees to prison for most violations have found a decrease in recidivism and a decreased crime rate, Wetzel said.

“We know that when offenders get out, if they’re connected to positive communities, be it faith-based, spiritual, the fancy term is pro-social supports,” they are less likely to come back, and putting offenders into community correction centers keeps them closer to those support systems, Wetzel said.

Angus Love, executive director of the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, said this latest iteration of prison reform, just as in past iterations, became weakened and “doesn’t achieve the expectations we had at the beginning.”

Love said eliminating pre-release was a deficit in the bill.

Rowe said the prosecutors and victims advocates “hated” the pre-release because it was not “truth in sentencing” when convicts would get out earlier than their minimum sentence.

Overall, Love said, “we’re just happy [Corbett] is not blocking it. In his former role [as Pennsylvania attorney general], he was vehement about blocking these bills.”

Greenleaf said that, while prerelease is eliminated, it is a better use of the community corrections center system to use it for technical parole violators, and Wetzel and his team are committed to developing reentry programs.

Wetzel said his department will prepare inmates for reentry to the civilian world by moving them to the correctional facility closest to their home communities.