Lawmakers Sponsor Bill to Give Federal Prisoners a Chance for “Second Look” at Their Sentences

By Natasha S. Alford, thegrio.com

A new bill heading to the house floor this week encourages judges to consider giving federal prisoners a second look at their cases…

The legislation, titled the Matthew Charles and William Underwood Second Look Act allows these prisoners to petition judges for a reduced sentence or release after they’ve served ten years in prison….

The bill’s sponsors, Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. Karen Bass, announced the news today, noting that the bill is meant to provide relief to people who were incarcerated as casualties of the failed war on drugs.

Ebony Underwood has watched her father William grow older behind bars for more than 30 years. He was denied clemency during the Obama presidency. (Courtesy Ebony Underwood)

“Our bill targets a harsh reality: there are hundreds of thousands of people behind bars — most of them people of color — who were sentenced under draconian laws during the height of the War on Drugs that we have since recognized were unfair,” Booker said in a statement….

The bill’s sponsors estimated that 250,000 people over the age of 50 are incarcerated and it costs taxpayers approximately $16 billion dollars a year to keep them locked up….

“If we’re a system of corrections, at what point are we correcting if we’re keeping people incarcerated for life without the opportunity of parole?”[quote from Ebony Underwood]

Read the full article here

Read also “New Study: Young Black Men are Serving the Longest of Increasingly Longer Prison Sentences”