Issues by State

States across the country are realizing that growing prison populations and costs are the result of adopting mandatory minimum sentencing laws and prison policies that keep people behind bars too long without increasing public safety.

See the states we’re currently working in below. You can jump straight to a given state by clicking its name.

Jump to a State

Alabama

FAMM continues to work in Alabama following a successful 2024 legislative session alongside state partners. Our work is focused on independent prison oversight and second look sentencing.

Prison Oversight

Alabama’s prison conditions are so horrendous that the U.S. Department of Justice has sued the Alabama Department of Corrections, saying that the conditions of confinement are unconstitutional. All correctional facilities should be safe and humane, and individuals who are incarcerated should remain close to their homes in order to maintain important family bonds. FAMM supports policies that provide individuals with rehabilitative programs and meaningful work and education opportunities, as well as substance abuse and mental health treatment. Every prison system should be subject to oversight by an independent body that has authority to monitor and inspect facilities, address prisoner grievances, and provide recommendations for improving correctional departments.

Second Look

Alabama sends too many people to prison for far longer than necessary. Sentencing laws that severely limit pathways to relief from excessive and unending punishment make the problem even worse. As a result, Alabama has thousands of aging, sick, and rehabilitated people whose continued incarceration serves absolutely no purpose. FAMM advocates second look sentencing, which allows courts or other decision-makers to reevaluate a person’s sentence after a significant period of time served to determine if it is still necessary. FAMM supports this because people change over time, and locking people up past the point of necessity makes no one safer.

Arizona

FAMM has been working in Arizona since 2019 and will continue in 2024. We are working closely with incredible local advocates and coalition partners to support Home Confinement and Prison Oversight. Arizona has some of the harshest sentencing laws in the country, and its prison system has been mired in scandal and disorder for more than a decade. A federal court recently declared that Arizona’s prison healthcare is so deficient it violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Arizona prisons desperately need oversight. To get involved in Arizona, sign up for our emails, or contact Bryan Widenhouse, Senior Policy Associate, at bwidenhouse@famm.org.

Home Confinement

Arizona’s prison system is overcrowded and understaffed. By implementing an electronic monitoring/home confinement system for some nonviolent incarcerated people, nearly 3,000 people could return to their homes and communities up to 18 months early. Arizona stakeholders and government leaders hope this will be a step to reducing the prison population. FAMM supports this because our criminal justice system often over incarcerates people in numbers and duration. The sooner rehabilitated people are returned to the community the sooner justice is restored.

Prison Oversight

California

FAMM began working in California in 2021 to repeal the state's mandatory minimums for a number of drug offenses. FAMM supported the successful passage of SB 73 by Sen. Scott Wiener which eliminated mandatory minimums for certain drug offenses while creating a safety valve for others. Read our summary of SB 73 to learn more.

In 2022, FAMM was a co-sponsor of AB 960, which was passed by the legislature and took effect in January 2023. AB 960 has vastly improved California’s Compassionate Release process by streamlining the decision making process, expanding medical eligibility, and ensuring every medically eligible individual receives their day in court. Read a summary of AB 960 here.

In 2023, FAMM supported two reforms to increase opportunities for second chances in California. The first bill would provide people sentenced to life without parole or given the death penalty the opportunity for resentencing after 20 years if they were sentenced prior to June 5, 1990. The second bill would provide most people sentenced to indeterminate life sentences an opportunity for parole after serving 15 years if they committed their offense before their 26th birthday.

In 2024, FAMM will continue supporting the second look bill which was introduced last year, as well as media access to prisons.

To get involved in our work in California, sign up for our emails and contact our Senior Policy Associate, Bryan Widenhouse, at bwidenhouse@famm.org.

Second Look

This bill would provide for judicial review for individuals serving life without parole or sentenced to death for offenses committed before June 5, 1990, and who have served at least 20 years of their sentence. Courts will review evidence of mitigating factors or reduced risk of violence consistent with changes in California law enacted in intervening years. In these cases, judges will have the discretion to leave the sentence unchanged or to resentence the person to a lesser sentence.

Media Access to Prisons

Illinois

FAMM will continue to work in Illinois in 2024. FAMM began working in Illinois in 2021, supporting legislation to advance our national Second Chances Agenda. In the 2021 legislature, we supported successful legislation to create a compassionate release mechanism. FAMM supports reinstating parole eligibility in Illinois’ sentencing system for those serving very lengthy sentences. People can change, but Illinois’ current law doesn’t give people a chance to show that they have grown, matured, are not a danger to others, and are ready to return home.

Read why every Illinois lawmaker should #VisitAPrison.

Second Look Legislation

In 1978, Illinois eliminated its system of discretionary parole. As a result, Illinois’ prison population boomed, growing over 150 percent between 1980 and 2018. Illinois’ lack of parole and excessive sentencing policies have also resulted in a large proportion of the prison population serving extreme sentences of 20 years or more and a large population of people in prison over the age of 50. FAMM advocates second look sentencing reform in Illinois to provide the Illinois Prisoner Review Board the ability to grant more people in Illinois’ prison a safe, public-safety informed release from prison.

Read our fact sheet on Second Look in Illinois.

Maryland

The 2024 Maryland legislative session has adjourned. FAMM is so excited that Gov. Wes Moore signed independent prison oversight into law (Chapter 836) on May 16, 2024, establishing the Office of the Correctional Ombudsman in Maryland! FAMM thanks all of the organizations, advocates, impacted people, and lawmakers who worked so diligently to make independent oversight of Maryland’s prisons a reality.

FAMM is continuing to work with partners and stakeholders in Maryland in the interim to help educate the public and lawmakers about the need for reform. Maryland has a large, expensive prison system, and we look forward to working with partners to ensure the newly-created Office of the Correctional Ombudsman is successful in its goals. Maryland also has the third worst compassionate release system in the country. FAMM is supporting reforms to compassionate release that streamline the application process and allow more elderly and ill people in state prisons to easily be considered for release when they are not a danger to public safety. FAMM is also supporting second look laws in Maryland to allow more people the opportunity for relief from excessive incarceration. To get involved in our work in Maryland, sign up for our emails and contact our Deputy Director of State Policy, Celeste Trusty, at ctrusty@famm.org.

Second Look

Maryland sends too many people to prison for far longer than necessary. Sentencing laws that severely limit pathways to relief from excessive and unending punishment make the problem even worse. As a result, Maryland has thousands of aging and sick people whose continued incarceration serves absolutely no purpose.

FAMM’s Second Chances Agenda in Maryland includes creating and expanding medical and geriatric release mechanisms, and establishing opportunities for a second look at extreme sentences.

Prison Oversight

Update - Governor Wes Moore signed independent prison oversight into law (Chapter 836) on May 16, 2024, establishing the Office of the Correctional Ombudsman in Maryland! FAMM thanks all of the organizations, advocates, impacted people, and lawmakers who worked so diligently to make independent oversight of Maryland’s prisons a reality.

FAMM supports efforts to establish independent oversight of our state and federal prison systems. Independent oversight includes regular inspections of prisons and investigations of serious problems by people that are not employees of the prison system. We believe that all correctional facilities should be safe and humane, and individuals who are incarcerated should remain close to their homes in order to maintain important family bonds. FAMM supports policies that provide individuals with rehabilitative programs, meaningful opportunities for employment and education, as well as treatment for substance dependencies and mental health concerns.

Unfortunately, FAMM consistently hears from our members that Maryland’s state prison facilities are unsafe, unsanitary, and lack sufficient medical and mental health care, staff, and rehabilitative programming. Additionally, Maryland families almost uniformly report to us difficulties in getting information about and help for their incarcerated loved ones from the staff and administration at the DPSCS. This is simply unacceptable, and highlights the critical need to establish independent prison oversight of Maryland’s prisons.

Medical and Elderly Release

In Maryland, it costs an average of nearly $40,000 a year to incarcerate each person, and that number grows exponentially as people age. In July of 2022, the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services reported more than 3,100 people over age 51 living in its state prisons, with more than 1,100 of this group over age 60. FAMM gave Maryland a failing grade on our Compassionate Release Report Card, with the third worst rating in the country.

As people mature into adulthood, the likelihood of engaging in criminal behavior diminishes, therefore it makes sense to create pathways for aging and sick incarcerated people to be released back into their communities instead of demanding continued incarceration.

Unfortunately efforts to expand medical and elderly release were unsuccessful this legislative session, but FAMM is committed to continuing our work with partners and other stakeholders to continue the work around this important issue.

Michigan

FAMM continues to work in Michigan following a successful 2024 legislative session alongside state partners. We have been active in the state several times in past decades, including on mandatory minimum sentencing reform. Our work this year is focused on compassionate release and creating a state sentencing commission.

Compassionate Release

Michigan’s compassionate release laws should be expanded and improved. Our justice system imprisons people to deter crime, punish those who commit crimes, protect the public, and rehabilitate prisoners who will one day return home. At FAMM, we believe prisoners should be released when they are too debilitated to commit further crimes, too compromised to benefit from rehabilitation, or too impaired to be aware of punishment. Michigan has many aging and ill people whose continued incarceration is expensive, unnecessary, and unjust.

Sentencing Commission

Michigan is one of just three states with sentencing guidelines but no sentencing commission to review them or collect data about their efficacy. Michigan has not had a sentencing commission since 1998. At that time, the average minimum state prison sentence was 7.1 years. Since then, it has increased to 12 years. Sentencing guidelines should evolve alongside the legislature and society, but Michigan’s have not been studied, assessed, or revised since their inception 25 years ago. Michigan lacks statewide sentencing data which is routinely kept in other jurisdictions and used to improve the justice system. FAMM supports establishing a Michigan Sentencing Commission with diverse membership to collect criminal justice data continuously and analyze it. The Commission could also develop evidence-based policy recommendations, and report annually to the legislature and public on its findings.

Missouri

FAMM continues to work in Missouri, after a successful 2024 legislative session. FAMM has a long history in the state including successful mandatory minimum sentencing reform in 2019. Our work focused on ending the crack powder sentencing disparity in 2024 and we were successful. We continue to work on creating second look opportunities through parole and compassionate release, independent prison oversight, and mandatory minimum sentencing reform, including so-called “truth-in-sentencing” provisions.

Crack Powder Sentencing Disparity

Missouri was one of a small number of states to still have an unfair sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses. Crack and powder cocaine are chemically identical drugs, but in Missouri, someone with one ounce of crack was treated the same as someone with 18.75 ounces of cocaine. That’s not fair. There was no good reason to treat crack and powder cocaine differently for sentencing, especially when its unfairness was a driver of racial disparities. The crack disparity diminished respect for the justice system. FAMM supported ending the disparity in 2023 and 2024, and the legislature did so in the 2024 session.

Second Look/Compassionate Release

Sentencing laws that severely limit pathways to relief from excessive and unending punishment make the problem even worse. As a result, Missouri has hundreds of aging, sick, and rehabilitated people whose continued incarceration serves absolutely no purpose. FAMM advocates second look sentencing, which allows courts or other decision-makers to reevaluate a person’s sentence after a significant period of time served to determine if it is still necessary. FAMM supports this because people change over time, and locking people up past the point of necessity makes no one safer.

While Missouri has a Medical Parole program, it is among the most poorly designed that FAMM has seen, and it gets a failing “F” grade. Missouri should expand its compassionate release mechanisms through both medical and age based criteria. Our justice system imprisons people to deter crime, punish, protect the public, and rehabilitate prisoners who will one day return home. At FAMM, we believe prisoners should be released when they are too debilitated to commit further crimes, too compromised to benefit from rehabilitation, or too impaired to be aware of punishment.

Independent Prison Oversight

Missouri families report facing significant issues as they “do the time” with their loved ones in prison. FAMM believes that all correctional facilities should be safe and humane, and individuals who are incarcerated should remain close to their homes in order to maintain important family bonds. FAMM supports policies that provide individuals with rehabilitative programs and meaningful work and education opportunities, as well as substance abuse and mental health treatment. Further, we believe that every prison system should be subject to oversight by an independent body that has authority to monitor and inspect facilities, address prisoner grievances, and provide recommendations for improving correctional departments.

Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Reform

Missouri is considering creating new mandatory minimum sentencing laws, even though FAMM successfully helped lawmakers limit them several years ago. Mandatory minimum sentences require courts to give people a certain prison sentence regardless of the facts or circumstances of the crime or the individual. The result is one-size-fits-all sentences that never fit all. Mandatory minimum sentences have not been proven to reduce or deter crime. They are expensive, fill prisons, and lead to overcrowding and new prison construction. They destroy families by keeping them apart too long, and have been shown to create and worsen racial disparities in sentencing. FAMM is actively opposing the creation of new mandatory minimums.

Pennsylvania

FAMM continues to work in Pennsylvania in 2024. Pennsylvania has the highest incarceration rate in the Northeastern U.S. and the second-highest number of people serving life without parole sentences in the country. In 2015, the state’s Supreme Court struck down its mandatory minimum laws as unconstitutional. Since then, FAMM has opposed efforts to reinstate mandatory minimum sentences. FAMM also supports reforms to life without parole sentences, increased use of early release for elderly and ill people in prison, more use of executive clemency, prison mail policies that keep families connected, and more. By implementing evidence-based sentencing reforms, state lawmakers can save taxpayer dollars or redirect those savings to proven alternatives to reduce crime and recidivism. To get involved in our work in Pennsylvania, sign up for our emails and contact our Deputy Director of State Policy, Celeste Trusty, at ctrusty@famm.org.

Second Chances Agenda

Pennsylvania sends too many people to prison for far longer than necessary, Sentencing laws that severely limit pathways to relief from excessive and unending punishment make the problem even worse. As a result, Pennsylvania has thousands of aging and ick people whose continued incarceration serves absolutely no purpose.

FAMM’s Second Chances Agenda in Pennsylvania includes ending life without parole, passing ,medical and geriatric release mechanisms, and broadly expanding clemency and compassionate release.

Prison Oversight

Pennsylvania is home to the oldest oversight organization in the United States: The Pennsylvania Prison Society. The cornerstone of the Prison Society’s work is its network of volunteer Official Visitors who have a nationally unique statutory right to visit with incarcerated people. FAMM acknowledges the critical work of the Prison Society and unites with them in seeking additional independent oversight and transparency. There is significantly more work to be done.

Medical and Elderly Release

More than 20 percent of people living in Pennsylvania’s prisons is over the age of 50, and many of these people have chronic health conditions. Maintaining such an enormous population of aging and ill people in our prisons is expensive, unnecessary, and unjust. Pennsylvania’s current law allowing for release of incarcerated people with terminal medical conditions is extremely narrow, procedurally cumbersome, and hardly ever used.

Pennsylvania does not have an existing release mechanism for aging incarcerated people. Pennsylvania must create mechanisms to release people in prison based on age, as well as medical need.

With a $5 copay associated with seeing a doctor in Pennsylvania’s prisons, it is also costly for incarcerated people to seek medical care. FAMM supports efforts to reduce and/or eliminate the medical copay in Pennsylvania’s prisons.

Clemency

In Pennsylvania, clemency is the only hope of relief for people serving very long and life without parole sentences. Commutations, a shortening of a sentence, are a necessary mechanism to release people from incarceration, address injustice, and support second chances, and FAMM believes their use should be substantially expanded. Under current law in Pennsylvania, the governor may not grant clemency to a person serving a sentence of life or death unless the five-person Pennsylvania Board of Pardons first provides a unanimous recommendation. FAMM supports efforts to revert the required unanimous Board of Pardons recommendation for these applicants back to the simple majority Pennsylvania required prior to the mid 1990s.

Ending Life Without Parole

Pennsylvania has more than 5,300 people serving life without parole sentences, the mandatory sentence for a first- or second-degree murder conviction in the commonwealth. FAMM supports efforts to repeal mandatory life sentences, allow opportunities for parole for people with these convictions, and make these reforms retroactive. All of us change and mature, and our laws should reflect that.

Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Reform

Dignity for Incarcerated Women

Tennessee

FAMM continues to work in Tennessee in 2024, building on prior years. FAMM successfully supported reforms to Tennessee’s overly broad and excessive mandatory minimum sentences for drug-free school zone offenses in 2020, and making those reforms retroactive in 2022. Hundreds of people in Tennessee became eligible for resentencing because of these retroactive reforms. Our 2024 work focuses on prison oversight and mandatory minimum sentencing reform.

Prison Oversight

FAMM believes that all correctional facilities should be safe and humane, and individuals who are incarcerated should remain close to their homes in order to maintain important family bonds. FAMM supports policies that provide individuals with rehabilitative programs and meaningful work and education opportunities, as well as substance abuse and mental health treatment. Further, we believe that every prison system should be subject to oversight by an independent body that has authority to monitor and inspect facilities, address prisoner grievances, and provide recommendations for improving correctional departments.

Through media reports and stories from our impacted families, we have become aware that the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center in Tennessee is a prison plagued by disturbing allegations that demand a federal civil rights investigation. Because of our concern for the health and well-being of incarcerated people and staff at the prison, FAMM is calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Tennessee’s Trousdale Turner Correctional Center and publicly issue its findings in a report.

Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Reform

Unfortunately, in recent years Tennessee has increasingly created mandatory time-served and mandatory minimum sentences. Several lawmakers are trying to create more despite the fact that long sentences do not deter crime or make us safer, produce unjust results, fill prisons, and cost taxpayers millions of dollars each year. FAMM opposes these efforts.

Additionally, Tennessee law still requires people convicted for crimes committed when they were under age 18 to serve at least 51 years in prison before they can become eligible for parole. FAMM supports creating earlier parole eligibility for this group of people.

Virginia

FAMM continued its work in Virginia in 2024. FAMM has been active in Virginia since 2021. Virginia has a large, expensive prison system that lacks basic transparency and accountability to the public, lawmakers, and taxpayers. Virginia also has some of the longest sentences in the country and lengthy time-served requirements that keep people in prison past the point at which they are rehabilitated and not a danger to anyone. Our work has focused on educating the public and lawmakers on independent prison oversight, second look sentencing, and mandatory minimum sentencing reform.

Independent Prison Oversight

Second Look Sentencing

Virginia hands out many lengthy prison sentences, but lacks second chances for people who grow, mature, and change while they are incarcerated. For decades, there has been no way for people serving very lengthy sentences in Virginia prisons to show that they are ready to come home and have earned release. Virginia does not have parole. Most sentencing reforms passed in the state are not applied to people already in prison. In Virginia, thousands of people continue to languish behind bars serving long sentences that are no longer necessary to keep us safe but cost taxpayers millions. Unfortunately, legislation to create a second look mechanism for incarcerated Virginians was unsuccessful during the 2024 legislative session.

Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Reform

Virginia law currently requires mandatory minimum sentences to be served concurrently. This causes sentences to “stack” up and judges have no discretion to prevent the imposition of these excessive sentences. We know that mandatory minimums do not work to deter crime and that every individual before the court is different. Unfortunately, legislation to provide judges the discretion to not stack mandatory minimum sentences was unsuccessful during the 2024 legislative session.

Washington

FAMM continued its work in Washington state during the 2024 legislative session. FAMM has been active in Washington since 2022. FAMM has worked to educate lawmakers and the public on second look sentencing and retroactive sentencing reform. Our work has focused on issues related to people who were young (under the age of 25) at the time of their offense and the impact that had on their decision making at the time of their offense and what that means for their sentencing.

Emerging Adult Second Look

In 2014, following the Supreme Court’s decision in Miller, the Washington legislature passed legislation that gave people under the age of 18 the opportunity for release after serving 20 years. The brain science that informed both the Supreme Court’s decision in Miller and the Washington legislature’s adoption of this policy tells us that people don’t fully develop until they are around 25 years old. FAMM has joined local organizations to educate the public and lawmakers on the need to rethink sentences for people 18 – 25 years old in the context of our understanding of brain development. Unfortunately, legislation to expand second look to emerging adults was unsuccessful during the 2024 legislative session.

Juvenile Points

In 2023, the Washington Legislature passed a bill that would ended the practice of using most juvenile adjudications to automatically enhance future sentences in the adult courts. This passed because the Legislature understood that people should not be punished twice for mistakes they made as kids. Unfortunately, this change only applied prospectively. FAMM has joined local organizations to educate the public and lawmakers on the importance of retroactive sentencing reform. Unfortunately, legislation to apply the 2023 reforms retroactively was unsuccessful during the 2024 legislative session.

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We are working across the U.S. Email us at famm@famm.org to see what we're working on in your state.

Issues by State

Alabama

Arizona

California

Illinois

Maryland

Michigan

Missouri

Pennsylvania

Tennessee

Virginia

Washington

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