| Before closing out the 2021 legislative session last week, lawmakers overwhelmingly adopted a new justice reform measure that will save taxpayer dollars, help the state fend off an investigation from the federal government, and provide second chances to those who have earned it.
Senate Bill 2795, the Mississippi Earned Parole Eligibility Act, passed the House 91-27 and cleared the Senate 35-13.
In 1994, as a sitting U.S. Senator, Joe Biden authored the Clinton-Biden Crime Bill. The law dramatically increased punishments for certain offenses, including non-violent drug offenses, and contained payments to states to reduce parole eligibility and other early release programs. As states like Mississippi adopted these changes it resulted in more people going to prison for longer periods of time and with fewer opportunities to earn re-entry. In intervening years, prison populations exploded, along with the cost to taxpayers to run these prisons.
In the early 2000s, criminal justice scholars began to realize that the policies that came out of the Clinton-Biden Crime Bill were counter-productive and not evidenced based. Conservative states like Texas began making real reforms to their system that have reduced their prison population, closed prisons, and saved taxpayers billions of dollars, all while lowering crime rates. By using a parole system to identify and release those in custody who are proven to be rehabilitated, they are able to focus state resources on those who represent a real threat to society.
Mississippi has been slower to adopt a smarter approach to parole, choosing to cling to many of the failed ideas of Clinton and Biden’s mistake. What Mississippi has to show for its reluctance is the second-highest rate of incarceration in the nation, over $3 billion in spending over the last decade, a burgeoning prison crisis, and a Department of Justice investigation which only threatens to accelerate under the Biden administration. |
