Senator Reverend Warnock urged the U.S. Sentencing Commission to take an “all of the above approach” to end mass incarceration. He submitted the letter as part of the Commission’s solicitation of public comments for their 2024-2025 research agenda

Senator Reverend Warnock: “The perpetuation of mass incarceration in the land of the free represents a failure of moral courage and imagination. The Sentencing Commission has a unique and critical opportunity to correct this injustice, and I urge the Commission to adopt a broad and ambitious agenda to end mass incarceration”

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-GA) urged the U.S. Sentencing Commission to take an “all of the above approach” to end mass incarceration. The U.S. Sentencing Commission is a bipartisan, independent agency within the judicial branch focused on federal sentencing practices. In addition to collecting and analyzing data, the Commission maintains the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which offer non-mandatory guidelines for federal judges when imposing sentences. This year, the Commission has issued a call for public comments on what should compromise their research agenda for 2024-2025. Senator Warnock submitted a letter as part of the Commission’s solicitation of public comments for their 2024-2025 research agenda.

“The United States of America, the land of the free, is the mass incarceration capital of the world. We incarcerate more people and for longer periods of time than almost every other country on the planet,” wrote Senator Reverend Warnock. “With approximately 1.8 million people in America’s jails and prisons, we hold the dubious distinction of having both largest number of people incarcerated and the highest incarceration rate among large countries. The United States imposes long sentences with greater frequency and with longer average sentences than most other countries in the world.”

“The perpetuation of mass incarceration in the land of the free represents a failure of moral courage and imagination. The Sentencing Commission has a unique and critical opportunity to correct this injustice, and I urge the Commission to adopt a broad and ambitious agenda to end mass incarceration…” continued Senator Reverend Warnock.

Notably, the United States incarcerate more people and for longer periods of time than almost every other country on the planet. With approximately 1.8 million people in America’s jails and prisons, the United States has both largest number of people incarcerated and the highest incarceration rate among large countries. It also imposes long sentences with greater frequency and with longer average sentences than most other countries in the world. The federal system is the country’s single largest prison system, even though the vast majority of those who are justice-involved will be involved with a state system. Individuals are sentenced to federal prison under federal state and the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, which are non-binding guidelines promulgated by the U.S. Sentencing Commission to federal judges.

A champion for returning citizens, Senator Warnock has spent decades seeking to make the American criminal justice system fairer. He has supported legislation to establish a federal public defender office in the Southern District of Georgia, and has recently spoken out against the SAFER Banking Act, raising concerns that the legislation would only benefit cannabis investors, but do nothing for the millions of Americans negatively impacted by the War on Drugs.

A full copy of the letter can be found HERE and below:

Dear Chair Reeves:

As the United States Sentencing Commission (“Commission”) sets its priorities for the 2024-2025 amendment cycle, I urge the Commission act on the urgent need to address the consequences of decades of mass incarceration and safely reduce the number of people behind bars. As the independent body charged with promulgating data-driven sentencing policies and practices for the federal courts, advising Congress and the Executive Branch, and conducting criminal justice research, the Commission has a unique opportunity and responsibility to advance the necessary work of ending mass incarceration. 

The United States of America, the land of the free, is the mass incarceration capital of the world. We incarcerate more people and for longer periods of time than almost every other country on the planet. With approximately 1.8 million people in America’s jails and prisons, we hold the dubious distinction of having both largest number of people incarcerated and the highest incarceration rate among large countries. The United States imposes long sentences with greater frequency and with longer average sentences than most other countries in the world. Indeed, well over half of the people in American prisons are serving sentences of 10 years or longer, and there are “[m]ore people . . . sentenced to life in prison in America than there were people in prison serving any sentence in 1970.”

The existence and persistence of mass incarceration is a scandal and a scar on the soul of America. It costs over $182 billion every year just to maintain local, state, and federal corrections infrastructure. And this price tag does not even come close to covering the true social, economic, and political costs of mass incarceration. Our system of incarceration disrupts housing, physical and mental health care, education, and employment on a massive scale, tearing at the social fabric that is necessary for families, communities, and democracy to thrive. The families and support networks of incarcerated people must bear countless invisible burdens and traumas in addition to the myriad everyday costs that come with caring for a loved one behind bars. When people are released from prison, they face a stigma and scars that make it harder to find jobs, safe and stable housing, educational opportunities, and can often prevent them from accessing our most fundamental right as citizens: the right to vote.

But even beyond these material consequences, the infrastructure of mass incarceration perpetuates a fear-based ideology that has a life of its own, one that warps our interactions with the state and with our fellow citizens. And it is an ideology that is especially pernicious for Black and Brown bodies: Black people are more than four times more likely to be incarcerated than White people and Latino people are twice as likely. As author Michelle Alexander has argued so forcefully, mass incarceration is Jim Crow’s most obvious descendent.

We find ourselves at a critical juncture. While the United States remains the leader in incarceration worldwide, we have also seen important progress in reducing incarceration without compromising public safety. Over the past decade, we have reduced our prison population by nearly a quarter and halved the Black imprisonment rate. Where once Black men were more likely to go to prison than graduate from college, the reverse is now true. The vast majority of states—45 in all—have reduced imprisonment rates and crime rates at the same time over this period. Data and experience make clear that safety and justice go hand-in-hand; we can reduce incarceration and enhance public safety at the same time.

The federal government and, in particular, the Sentencing Commission are on the frontlines of addressing mass incarceration. With approximately 158,000 people in federal custody, the federal prison system is the largest prison system in the country. Indeed, 1 in 8 people in prison in the United States is in federal custody. This is neither preordained nor inevitable. In 1980, there were less than 25,000 people in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. By 2013, that number had exploded to nearly 220,000, largely due to increasingly severe federal sentencing laws and state laws and policies that fed enhanced sentences at the federal level. From 2013 to 2020, however, our country made a serious effort to reform sentencing, increase the use of clemency, and pass evidence-based legislation. As a result, we safely reduced the federal prison population by nearly a third. Since 2020, though, the federal prison population has increased by 2%, imperiling the recent downward trend. The Commission has a responsibility to continue to advance evidence-based policies that prevent unnecessary incarceration.

The perpetuation of mass incarceration in the land of the free represents a failure of moral courage and imagination. The Sentencing Commission has a unique and critical opportunity to correct this injustice, and I urge the Commission to adopt a broad and ambitious agenda to end mass incarceration by considering the following topics, at minimum:

1. Whether any Sentencing Guidelines result in unnecessarily lengthy sentences, whether lowering base offense levels across the Sentencing Guidelines is an appropriate remedy, and, in the Commission’s advisory role to Congress, in what contexts mandatory minimums fail to meet the goals of sentencing;
2. Whether the Sentencing Guidelines unduly or unnecessarily emphasize sentences of imprisonment over alternatives such as fine-only sentences, probation, or other forms of community supervision;
3. Whether drug sentences that are linked to drug quantity and purity serve the goals of promoting individual responsibility, accountability, treatment, and rehabilitation and whether a holistic reassessment of drug penalties, and particularly their relationship to mandatory minimums, are necessary;
4. Whether the Sentencing Guidelines exacerbate injustices at the state level by increasing federal sentencing guideline ranges based on state convictions, despite significant variation in criminal procedure, sentencing policy, and more;
5. Whether orders under the federal system of supervised release should be shortened and whether the federal system adequately focuses on treatment and support;
6. Whether current practices regarding pre-trial detention result in the unnecessary detainment of individuals legally presumed to be innocent; and
7. In the case of any potential reforms that the Commission puts forward, estimating how many individuals per state would be affected by such reforms

Sincerely,

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