Criminal Justice Reform in the States: Spotlight on Legislatures

Colorado: Felony murder

Felony murder, a charge that is used against people who were present at a murder that they did not commit, will be punished less severely in Colorado. A new law, signed by Governor Jared Polis this week, has lowered its classification so that it will no longer trigger an automatic sentence of life without the possibility of parole; instead, it will carry sentences of between 16 and 48 years. The law is not retroactive, though; that is a major difference from when California reformed its felony murder statutes in 2018, enabling the release of some incarcerated people.

Washington, D.C.: Lengthy sentences

Washington, D.C., enacted the Second Look Amendment Act, a reform that gives hundreds of people who are serving very lengthy sentences a chance to be released earlier than scheduled. Prior to this reform, D.C. was already allowing “people who committed serious crimes before their 18th birthday to petition the court for resentencing after they have served at least 15 years,” The Appeal explained in December. The new law raises the cutoff age to 25. This makes D.C. the first jurisdiction to effectively end life without parole for people who committed a crime before age 25, a milestone for efforts to restrict life sentences.

Maryland: Youth sentencing

Maryland’s legislature abolished the sentence of life without the possibility of parole for children. Maryland is the 25th state to end this type of sentence. The law, which applies retroactively, will enable anyone convicted of a crime they did before the age of 18 to be considered for a new sentence after 20 years of incarceration.

Washington: Voting rights

A new law will enable all formerly incarcerated Washingtonians to vote. Signed into law by the governor in April, it enfranchises people on probation and parole.

The Political Report talked to State Representative Tarra Simmons, a formerly incarcerated lawmaker who championed the legislation.

New Mexico: Qualified immunity

New Mexico barred the qualified immunity defense in state courts via House Bill 4. Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine that often shields police departments from civil lawsuits over misconduct. Only Colorado had adopted a law outright to bar qualified immunity in state courts; Connecticut narrowed the doctrine but left in important caveats.

New Mexico: Marijuana

New Mexico adopted new laws to legalize marijuana and expunge some past convictions. Other social equity provisions were removed, to be repackaged in a separate bill. New Mexico is the third state in a stretch of 13 days to adopt such legislation, an illustration of the changing tide on the issue: Only two states had legalized marijuana via legislation before this stretch.

Georgia: Youth Sentencing

House Bill 272 would have “raised the age” until which young people can be prosecuted as minors to 18. The bill looked to be in promising shape when it passed the Georgia House in early March, but the Senate did not pick-up the bill before the end of the state’s 2021 legislative session. As a result, Georgia will remain one of only three states in the country to continue prosecuting all 17-year-olds as adults, alongside Texas and Wisconsin.

Maryland: Policing

Lawmakers adopted the Maryland Police Accountability Act, overriding a veto by the GOP governor. The legislative package makes complaints about the police more transparent and tightens the standards of what use of force is considered appropriate. It also repeals Maryland’s “Bill of Rights” for police officers, a set of rules said to shield police from accountability. The reform is meant to constrain the latitude of police chiefs to disregard disciplinary actions. Police union officials fought the legislation.

Mississippi: Parole

Mississippi has adopted a law that will give a shot at early release to thousands. It will either make them newly eligible for parole (it lifts the parole ineligibility imposed in 1995 for some offenses), or make them eligible for parole earlier than they would have been. But the law comes with carve-outs, and even for those who may benefit, Mississippi retains tremendously long sentences. Under the new law, some people convicted of a nonviolent offense may need to wait as long as 10 years for a hearing, and as long as 25 years for an armed robbery.

Texas: Life sentences

A bill passed by the state House would enable people convicted for crimes they commit as minors to request parole more quickly. Texas has already abolished sentences of life without parole against minors, but some need to wait as long as 40 years to be eligible. This bill, which moves to the Senate, would shorten that wait: People convicted as minors would be eligible for parole after at most 20 years. (It carves out anyone convicted of killing at least two people.) 

Virginia: Sentencing

Virginia adopted a series of sentencing reforms in April. They include House Bill 2290, which ends the enhanced penalties for people repeatedly convicted of misdemeanor theft; HB 1936, which ends the practice of punishing all felony robbery by at least five years in prison, though some robbery convictions will retain very long term; and SB 1315, which will allow defendants to present evidence of mental illness or autism spectrum disorder in court. Defendants have until now been barred from doing this, which can significantly complicate some people’s ability to mount a defense that reflects what happened. Also, HB 2038 is meant to restrict incarceration over probation violations.  

Virginia: Marijuana

Virginia has adopted a law to legalize marijuana. On April 7, the legislature approved requested amendments made by the state’s governor; this will speed up legalization to July of this year, rather than wait until 2024 as provided by the original bill. Some home growth will also be legal this summer.

That said, retail sales will have to wait until 2024, a delay that marijuana advocates are denouncing; they also point to other areas of improvement such as the continued criminalization of young people caught with marijuana. The law will also provide for the automatic expungement of past convictions.

New York: Marijuana and solitary confinement

New York adopted two major laws on March 31, The Appeal reports.

It barred placing people in solitary confinement for more than 15 days, which is the strictest limit on its use through a law anywhere in the country. The law is the culmination of years of activism in New York.

New York also legalized marijuana. The issue has languished for years in Albany, amid a legacy of widescale enforcement. Reform advocates are now celebrating the law as a win for social justice. The package includes a provision to expunge past convictions over behavior that will now be legal. It also bars the police from invoking the smell of cannabis to justify vehicle searches, an excuse the police have used aggressively.

Kentucky: Youth prosecutions

A new law in Kentucky will end any mandatory transfer of minors into adult court. Transfers will happen through decisions made on each individual case by the court system. (The vast majority of states allow mandatory transfers.)

Ever since a wave of “tough on crime” laws in 1996, Kentucky has automatically sent children age 14 and older to adult court when they are charged with offenses involving firearms. And the adult prosecution of children has disproportionately harmed Black youth.

This new law would not bar adult prosecution, though. At least the discretion to transfer a child into adult court will not solely rest on the prosecutor, as is the case in many states; a judge will have to approve a prosecutor’s request.

Virginia: Death penalty and voting rights

Virginia, the state that has executed the most people throughout the nation’s history, has now abolished the death penalty.  

This is a landmark for the nationwide movement against capital punishment, since Virginia is the first Southern state to do this. And state advocates are celebrating it as a milestone for racial justice, The Appeal reports.

Virginia’s governor also took executive action this month to enfranchise formerly incarcerated Virginians.

North Carolina: Youth prosecutions

Lawmakers are considering bills to raise the minimum age at which children can be prosecuted. The state currently allows children as young as 6 to be criminally prosecuted, the lowest age set in the nation.

The Herald-Sun reported on a 6-year-old child brought to court for having allegedly picked-up a tulip in someone’s backyard; a disproportionate share of children under the age of 11 who face criminal complaints in North Carolina are Black.

Utah: Pretrial rules

Utah has repealed the bail reform it adopted in 2020, which may ramp up pretrial detention. As the Political Report reports, the 2020 law encouraged judges to opt for the least restrictive mode of detention they deemed adequate, and reduce the reliance on cash bail.

Another new law in Utah will bar the public release of mugshots until there is a criminal conviction, with some carve-outs. Route Fifty reported on the bill in February. The bill Republican sponsor appealed to the presumption of innocence. Utah’s choice to lean into pretrial detention threatens that presumption, though.

Kentucky: Defelonization

Two new laws should reduce the number of people convicted of felonies. One increases to $1,000 from $500 the threshold of the value at which theft is prosecuted as a felony rather than a misdemeanor; another increases to $2,500 from $1,000 the amount of unpaid child support that can be prosecuted as a felony. A felony-level conviction carries far heavier consequences.

Another new law will protect women from being placed in solitary confinement when they are pregnant and six weeks after giving birth. The Lexington Herald Leader provides more context on the legislative session.

Virginia: Sentencing

A major push to end mandatory minimum sentencing derailed in Virginia. The state’s 2021 legislative session ended with no final action, dooming the reform for the year, even though each legislative chamber had adopted separate bills to restrict mandatory minimums.

Advocates who back the reforms stressed that mandatory minimums fuel higher incarceration rates, and that they grant prosecutors more leverage to pressure defendants into guilty pleas. But the two bills were of very varying scopes.

Virginia: Solitary confinement

Virginia will not restrict solitary confinement this year. The House failed to take up a bill that passed the Senate in February and would end long-term solitary confinement. The Appeal reported on this legislative effort, writing about the harrowing case of a man who was held for more than 600 days in solitary confinement in a state prison. The bill derailed in part because the Virginia DOC claimed it would take $23 million to implement the legislation, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.

Illinois

Governor J.B. Pritker, a Democrat, signed into law an omnibus bill that upends many areas of the criminal legal system. The law, championed by the Legislative Black Caucus in the legislature’s lame-duck session in January, was years in the making due to the work of a large coalition of activists and advocacy groups. 

Bail reform: Its most emblematic provision is an end to cash bail: Illinois will no longer connect pretrial release to the fulfillment of financial conditions that defendants are often unable to meet. Once the bill goes into effect, Illinois will be the first state to outright end cash bail. But that will not be until 2023. NBC News reports that Illinois advocates are optimistic that the bill avoids some of the pitfalls of other reforms, which replaced cash bail with rules that local advocates warned would not shrink pretrial detention.

Prison gerrymandering: The law bars prison gerrymandering—a practice that skews political representation toward whiter and more rural areas—in the drawing of legislative maps. But a clause considerably delays the reform’s implementation.

Driver’s license suspensions: People will no longer see their licenses suspended over unpaid red-light and speed camera tickets, and help thousands regain their drving privileges. This is amid national momentum against suspending driver’s licenses.

Felony murder: The law will narrow the felony murder doctrine, but it will not bring relief to people already incarcerated because it will not apply retroactively. 

Policing: The law requires more thorough records of misconduct. It also tightens certain policing rules, including a ban on chokeholds, though such statutes have been insufficient elsewhere given the broader context of impunity.

New York: Sex work and policing

New York has repealed a statute, known as the “walking while trans” ban, that gave New York police officers wide discretion to arrest people for “loitering for the purpose of prostitution.” It enabled “police to decide, for instance, that a woman’s skirt is too short, or that she’s been lingering too long on one street corner,” as Amanda Arnold wrote in The Cut. Trans women were primary targets for arrests.

The new law, sponsored by Democratic lawmakers Brad Hoylman and Amy Paulin, comes out of sustained activism and litigation by sex worker advocates and by groups such as the Legal Aid Society, DecrimNY, and the New York Transgender Advocacy Group.

New Jersey: Marijuana

A package of new laws, adopted in late February, will legalize marijuana in New Jersey and implement the ballot initiative that voters approved in the fall. Areas that have faced more arrests over marijuana will be designated as “impact zones” and receive more of the funding generated by mariuana sales, the Asbury Park Press reports. In New Jersey, as elsewhere, the prohibition of marijuana has been enforced through extreme racial disparities.

A big sticking point in legislative negotiations was the rules for people under 21, who are barred from possessing or buying marijuana. The final compromise does not include civil penalties and fines, but it makes marijuana possession by someone under 21 subject to a written warning and referral to community service groups.

California: Policing

Last fall, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed legislation that would have set up a pilot program for health professionals to respond to some emergency calls instead of the police. The bill’s chief sponsor, Assemblymember Sydney Kamlager, has now reintroduced the bill, known as the CRISES Act, in California’s 2021 session.

To push it through, she and her allies have to navigate Newsom’s resistance. Piper French reports in The Appeal: Political Report about the larger battles that this bill has come to encapsulate. This dispute, she writes, “will give Californians another opportunity to confront the debate around whether alternatives to incarceration should originate within police departments.”

Massachusetts: Policing

Massachusetts has repealed a state mandate that there be police presence in schools, Rachel Cohen reports in The Appeal: Political Report. A coalition of advocates formed over the summer to press for this change. The law enables them to take their case for ending police presence directly to local school superintendents. Some activists are now already pressing forward.

With Massachusetts’s reform, Cohen reports, Florida and Maryland are the two remaining states that mandate some police presence in schools. Legislative efforts to change that are ongoing.

South Dakota: Life sentences

South Dakota’s state Senate made history in February when it passed a bill, championed by Republican state Senator Arthur Rusch, that would have ended life without the possibility of parole sentences for anyone under the age of 25. South Dakota would have been the first state with such a reform. The legislation has since been killed in the state House, however.

California: Law enforcement

A new bill introduced by state Senator Scott Wiener, a Democrat, would lift the requirement that a sheriff’s candidate have a background in law enforcement, Katie Fernelius reports in The Appeal: Political Report. The measure may pave the way for more sheriff candidates who want to challenge mass incarceration, but are currently banned from running. Advocates note that sheriffs frequently run unopposed.

Oregon: Voting rights

Oregon lawmakers have introduced a bill to enable people to vote from prison, reports The Appeal: Political Report. Advocates are hopeful that the stars are aligned for Oregon to join Maine, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., as jurisdictions with no felony disenfranchisement. “Prison is about the loss of liberty, not the loss of citizenship,” said an incarcerated advocate.

Advocates are planning efforts on this issue this year in other states, such as Virginia. Some Democrats in Georgia have filed a bill to end disenfranchisement, although the GOP runs the state government there, unlike in Oregon.

National: Cracking down on protests

Tennessee adopted a new law last year that criminalized activities tied with protests. Now, a disturbing trend has emerged in 2021 of other state legislatures considering bills meant to crack down on protestors, and using the Jan. 6 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol as cover, The Appeal reports.

In Missouri, a Republican senator is proposing legislation that “would release a motorist from liability if they injure someone who blocks traffic during an unlawful protest,” writes the St Louis Post-Dispatch.

Ohio: Youth justice

Ohio will no longer sentence minors to life without the possibility of parole, and it will curtail sentences that effectively amount to the same, writes The Appeal: Political Report. Youth justice advocates are celebrating Senate Bill 256 as their latest win in nationwide efforts to keep kids from spending their life in prison.

Ohio is the 24th state that will no longer impose life without parole sentences on minors, but advocates are warning that there is more work ahead. Advocates in other states, such as Illinois and Maryland are pushing for similar reforms.

Washington: Three strikes

Hundreds of people are serving life sentences in Washington State because of its harsh “three strikes” statutes. A law the state adopted in 2020 enables prosecutors to seek to resentence people, if they desire to do so, but the Seattle Times reports that some prosecutors such have made it clear they will not consider revisiting people’s sentences. One lawmaker says this could lead to “justice by geography.” But the legislature has chosen to not make its tweaks to the “three strikes” system retroactive, one reason people who are incarcerated cannot appeal through a new uniform statewide standard. (Washington prosecutors’ statewide association lobbied to prevent retroactivity in 2019.)

Michigan: Fines and fees

Michigan will no longer suspend driver’s licenses when people fail to pay their traffic tickets. In taking away many people’s main mode of transportation, these suspensions cut off access to work and make it harder for people who are impoverished to pay off debt; many people also then get prosecuted if they are stopped while driving with a suspended license. The new law, signed last week, adds to the national momentum against license suspensions. It does not entirely end the suspension of driver’s licenses over court debt, though: The state will continue suspensions over a failure to pay fines and fees accrued over some criminal convictions.

Michigan: Sexual offense registry

A federal court ruled in 2016 that Michigan’s registry requirements for people convicted of sexual offenses were unconstitutional, compelling the state to either revise its statutes or have its sexual offense registry struck down. In December, Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed into law a bill that tweaked the state’s system to save the registry’s existence. The ACLU of Michigan had urged a veto: “Registries are counterproductive and may increase offending because they make it extremely difficult for registrants to obtain a job, find housing, and rejoin their families, sabotaging their efforts to become productive members of the community.”

National: A 2020 retrospective

Read the The Appeal: Political Report’s year-end review of the changes states adopted in 2020.

In this challenging year, state officials largely forgoed the sort of reforms that would have significantly emptied prisons amid the public health crisis or confronted police brutality. Still, on other issues there was headway, and states set many new milestones: Some decriminalized drug possession, automated expungement, repealed life without parole for minors and the death penalty, and ended prison gerrymandering, among other measures.

New York: Fines and fees

In a New Year’s Eve win for criminal justice reformers, a new law will end the state’s practice of suspending driver’s licenses over unpaid fines. In taking away many people’s main mode of transportation, these suspensions cut off access to work. And they disproportionately affect Black New Yorkers.

But the governor weakened the bill as a condition of signing it. The legislation, as originally passed by the legislature, would also have ended driver’s license suspensions when people fail to appear at traffic court hearings.

Drug reforms on Nov. 3

In a national first, Oregon voters approved an initiative to decriminalize drugs on Nov. 3. Measure 110 makes low-level drug possession a civil offense, punishable by a fine. Zachary Siegel wrote for the Political Report that the result marks “a momentous shift in favor of a public health-focused approach to substance use, and a turn away from longtime policies that incarcerate people.” Advocates warn more work is needed to reduce law enforcement and inequalities.

Also, Oregonians supported a measure to legalize psilocybin mushrooms for therapeutic purposes, and Washington, D.C., mostly decriminalized psilocybin.

Marijuana reforms on Nov. 3

Ballot initiatives to legalize marijuana triumphed on Election Day. They succeeded in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota. And Mississippi legalized medical marijuana. But much remains to be decided regarding the shape that marijuana legalization will take in these four states, Kaila Philo writes in the Political Report, including what the new revenue will fund and what will happen to past convictions.

South Dakota advocates are now pushing for the state to expunge marijuana-related convictions. In New Jersey, they are pushing officials to advance social equity more directly. And many states are looking ahead to 2021 and 2022.

California: Voting rights

California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 17, a ballot initiative that restores the right to vote to anyone who is not presently incarcerated. The measure was put on the ballot by the legislature. California becomes the 19th state, alongside Washington D.C., to enfranchise all adult citizens who are not in prison. Colorado, Nevada, and New Jersey all adopted similar reforms in 2019. Some advocates are vowing to press forward to abolish disenfranchisement altogether.

Initiatives on incarceration

Multiple states held referendums that touch on sentencing or incarceration on Nov. 3. California rejected Proposition 20, which would have rolled back some decarceral sentencing reforms adopted. Oklahoma rejected State Question 805, which would have prevented prosecutors from seeking harsh sentencing enhancements against some defendants. Nevada passed Question 3, a measure that will make the state’s pardon process a bit easier.

New Jersey: Incarceration

Governor Phil Murphy signed into law a bill (S2519) that will significantly reduce the prison population, and do so within weeks. The bill is the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic’s deadly devastation in its prisons and jails. It will grant many people incarcerated in the state with early release. “Reducing our prison population will undoubtedly further our mission to combat COVID-19,” Murphy said. More than 2,000 people will be released on Nov. 4, according to his office, and an additional 1,000 will be released through January.

Vermont: Marijuana

When Vermont legalized marijuana possession in 2018, it did not also put in place a legal and regulated system of marijuana sales, unlike what has happened in many other states. This year, Vermont’s legislature passed a bill to implement such a system, and Governor Phil Scott allowed it to become law without his signature. Marijuana Moment details the fights that went into the legislation, and the logistics of the system of retail sales and dispensary licenses it will authorize. Separately, Scott signed a bill that will automatically expunge the convictions of people convicted of possessing marijuana.

Virginia adopted a law that bans law enforcement from stopping and searching a vehicle on the basis of the smell of marijuana. Virginia decriminalized marijuana possession in the spring but it still allowed such searches, which lead to punitive and racially disparate law enforcement, and advocates pushed for further change.

Governor Northam also signed a law that makes some people who are terminally ill eligible to be considered for parole. Virginia ended the parole process in the 1990s but has taken incremental steps to revive it this year.

Northam also signed into law a package of legislation that reforms policing rules, including a ban on no-knock warrants, a bill to strengthen the decertification process, and a bill authorizing jurisdictions to create civilian oversight boards with subpoena power. Virginia is now the second state to have a law banning no-knock warrants, after Oregon.

Many of the bolder bills that advocates were pushing for, though, including qualified immunity reform, derailed during the special session

Michigan has adopted a major package of legislation that will enable hundreds of thousands of state residents to clear their criminal records. The package expands the range of cases which people can expunge and streamlines the petition process. This includes marijuana-related convictions for acts that are no longer illegal since marijuana was legalized in 2018. 

It also makes expungement automatic for many misdemeanors and some felonies, though after a prolonged wait time. Known as “Clean Slate,” the reform will apply retroactively, though the automated expungements will begin in two years.

Once it is implemented, eligible Michiganders will see their records expunged without having to apply or file a petition. The immense majority of people eligible for an expungement do not apply because of cost, lack of information, or administrative complexity. A study published last year found that 90 percent of Michiganders eligible for an expungement had not applied.

According to the tracking of the Collateral Consequences Resource Center, Michigan is the sixth state to adopt a law that automates at least some expungement.

Michigan also eliminated its ban on people receiving food assistance benefits (SNAP) if they have multiple drug-related convictions.

Governor Gavin Newsom ended September by signing, and vetoing, a flurry of bills pertaining to the criminal legal system.

Here are 10 bills that Newsom signed into law.

—Assembly Bills 3070 and 2542 will make it harder for prosecutors to exclude Black people from jury trials, and that will make it easier for defendants to appeal a conviction or sentence on the grounds that it is racially discriminatory. The Appeal: Political Report lays out the significance of these reforms for the fight against racism in jury selection.

—AB 1950 caps probation terms at one year for misdemeanors and two years for felonies. Probation terms are stringent and can result in incarceration over technical violations.

—Senate Bill 203 has made California the first state in the nation to require that minors consult with legal counsel before a police interrogation. 

—AB 1506 shifts the responsibility of investigating police killings of unarmed people onto the state’s attorney general, instead of local DAs. 

—SB 32 provides that transgender people be detained in a prison based on their gender identity; it also enables the state to deny this due to “management or security concerns.”

—SB 823 takes a step toward phasing out California’s youth prisons. Its existing facilities will largely stop admitting minors starting in July 2021; minors will be detained instead in facilities run by county governments.

—AB 3234 makes two separate moves. First, it expands eligibility for the state’s elderly parole process; most notably, people will be eligible at age 50 instead of 60. Second, it enables judges, without a prosecutor’s assent, to steer people charged with misdemeanors into a pretrial diversion program, meaning that completing the program would result in the dismissal of the charges. 

—In 2017, California had barred the imposition of some fines and court fees on minors and on their parents or guardians, effective January 2018. SB 1290 now vacates the fines and fees that had already been imposed as of that date.

Newsom vetoed the CRISES Act, which was going to set up a pilot program for mental health or medical professionals to respond to some 911 calls instead of the police. He said the bill located the pilot program in the wrong state agency. Sydney Kamlager, the lawmaker who introduced the bill, vowed to press ahead. “We will continue to pursue community alternatives to police response that are not controlled by law enforcement,” she said in a statement.

He also vetoed SB 555, which would have capped the cost of phone and video calls for incarcerated people, as well as capped the inflation of commissary items, with an eye to fighting the exhorbitant fees incarcerated people have to pay, in what is a nationwide problem.

Finally, Newsom vetoed SB 1220, which would have mandated that DA offices maintain a Brady list of officers with a history of lying or misconduct; Newsom said this is too costly to implement.

Florida: Criminalizing protests

Governor Rick DeSantis unveiled harsh legislation that would make activities like blocking a road a felony. The bill would also make it a felony to have been present in an assembly during which people or property were injured, as well as a charge for which bail should not be granted. And the bill would shield people who cause others’ death, for instance by running them over with a car, if they show they were “fleeing from a mob.” Other states have been moving to similarly shield people who run someone over. 

Washington: Decarceration

The Department of Corrections is proposing for legislation that would cut the state’s prison population by 30 percent within the next fiscal year. Proposals range from “minimizing prison time for some nonviolent offenders to increasing time off for good behavior to bringing back a version of parole,” the Seattle Times writes. The twin contexts of this conversation are the state’s fiscal crisis, and its staggering racial inequalities. Four percent of the state’s population is Black, but Black residents are 18 percent of those who are in prison, and 25 percent of those who are in prison for at least 15 years.

California: Formerly incarcerated firefighters

Incarcerated people are often sent to battle dangerous wildfires for minimal pay, but they are prohibited from becoming firefighters once they leave prison. California adopted a new law last week that loosens those rules. But The Appeal reports that the law comes with major hurdles—the process is not automatic, there are carve-outs, and prosecutors can object—due, again, to the vocal opposition of police unions, state DAs, and firefighters unions.

Pennsylvania: Probation

Pennsylvania has an exceptionally harsh probation system that traps people in long periods of supervision, as the Philadelphia Inquirer documented in the fall of 2019. A bipartisan bill to overhaul the system appeared to have momentum, but it was gutted, and ultimately even the weakened bill did not make it to the governor’s desk. The Appeal reports on what happened.

Hawaii will no longer punish people unable to pay off court debt by restricting their access to driver’s licenses. 

Until now, people who owed fines and fees have been barred from renewing their licenses. This practice compounds underlying inequalities. In taking away people’s main mode of transportation, it cuts off access to work and make it harder to pay off debt in the first place.

House Bill 2750, which became law in Hawaii on Sept. 15, ends this practice. 

One caveat: Individuals who are already barred from renewing their licenses will have to petition the court to lift that. Someone who incurs unpaid court debt in the future, though, will not have to take additional action.

This adds to a nationwide stream. Hawaii is the 10th state to end the link between court debt and driver’s licenses, according to tracking by the Fines and Fees Justice Center, a national organization that testified in favor of Hawaii’s bill, as did state groups like the Hawaiʿi Health & Harm Reduction Center, the Community Alliance on Prisons, and the ACLU of Hawaii. Oregon and Virginia adopted similar laws in 2020; Montana did in 2019.

Governor David Ige, a Democrat, signed HB 2750 into law. He also signed Senate Bill 2193, which expands partial protections against employment discrimination for people with a criminal record, and HB 285, which requires police departments to disclose the identity of officers who are discharged or suspended. But he vetoed a bill that would have expanded work furlough opportunities.

Nebraska: Parole and death penalty

Setbacks for criminal justice reform in Nebraska, the Omaha World-Herald reports. Governor Pete Rickets vetoed a bill that would have made people eligible for parole two years before their scheduled release. He also vetoed a separate bill that would have required that witnesses be allowed to see the entirety of an execution; proponents say this is important for there to be accountability if an execution is botched. 

Tennessee: Criminalizing protests

The state’s Republican government is cracking down against Black Lives Matter protests. Governor Bill Lee signed into law a bill that toughens penalties for offenses associated with protest activity. In particular, the legislation makes it a felony punishable by up to six years in prison to illegally camp on state property, and creates a mandatory incarceration period for offenses tied with rioting.

Georgia: Policing

Black Lives Matter protests have demanded accountability for the police. Georgia responded this month with a new law that creates a new offense of “bias motivated intimidation” against a police officer. Andrea Young, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia, said the law was “hastily drafted as a direct swipe at Georgians participating in the Black Lives Matter protests who were asserting their constitutional rights.” Brian Kemp, the Republican governor who signed the law, framed it as a direct response to the current protests. “While some vilify, target and attack our men and women in uniform for personal or political gain, this legislation is a clear reminder that Georgia is a state that unapologetically backs the blue,” he said.

Missouri: Incarceration

The Missouri Senate adopted a “tough on crime” package, championed by the state’s Republican governor, that would lock up more minors and narrow availability for parole. The package would also eliminate the requirement that St. Louis police officers live in the city. The bill passed 27-3, and columnist Ray Hartmann notes that the three “nay” votes came from the chamber’s only Black Democrats. Senator Jamilah Nasheed, one of the bill’s opponents, told Hartmann that “white Democrats stood alongside white Republicans against Black officials who understand the plight of what is happening in their own communities.” Senator Karla May, who also opposed it, noted that adult prosecutions of minors disproportionately target Black children.

Oregon: Incarceration

Governor Kate Brown, a Democrat, proposed closing two minimum-security prisons to counter the spread of the coronavirus, but legislative leaders stalled the recommendation. Senator Betsy Johnson, also a Democrat, said keeping prisons open was a way to protect jobs. Brown is defending another approach. “We can safely close prisons, keep our communities safe and reduce taxpayer expenses,” the governor said.

North Carolina: “Ban the box”

Governor Ray Cooper signed an executive order last week that “bans the box” in the public sector. North Carolina will no longer ask applicants for state jobs whether they have a criminal record. Legislation to do this in the private sector as well has stalled in the past in the legislature. In the wake of renewed Black Lives Matter protests this spring, the legislature passed two laws pertaining to the criminal legal system, with reformers questioning why the state is not doing more. One enables judges to sentence someone convicted of some low-level drug offenses to less than the mandatory minimum if they get treatment for substance use; the other slightly expands expungement opportunities.

Minnesota: Policing

A new Minnesota law introduces new rules against the use of chokeholds and neck restraints, creates a new unit to investigate police killings, and removes the ability of police unions to veto an independent arbitrator.

But MinnPost reports that the bill is far narrower than what Democrats (who control the House but not the Senate) had proposed; some voted “no,” saying that it would not make a meaningful difference on law enforcement.

Mississippi: Parole

Efforts to reduce the prison population in Mississippi, a state with an astronomical incarceration rate, suffered a major setback last week. Governor Tate Reeves, a Republican, vetoed a bill that would have made thousands of incarcerated people eligible for parole. The bill, which passed the GOP-run legislature with bipartisan support, made people convicted of nonviolent offenses eligible for parole after serving 25 percent of their sentence, and others after serving 50 percent. Reeves also vetoed a separate bill that would have enabled people to expunge some felony convictions for nonviolent offenses. Reeves won last year in an election system that excluded roughly 10 percent of the state’s adult population due to a felony conviction.

Georgia: Public defense

State lawmakers this month wanted to cut the budget of the state’s public defender system and eliminate its appellate division. Faced with backlash, they backed down. But the leadership of the Georgia Public Defender Office chose to nevertheless dismantle the division, leaving some Georgia advocates alarmed by what this will mean for people’s ability to challenge their convictions.

Oregon: Fines and fees

Oregon ended the suspension of driver’s licenses over unpaid fines and fees, a practice that can trigger mounting economic and legal trouble for people who cannot afford their court debt. Oregon is only the ninth state to do so. Criminal justice reform advocates now want public authorities to more fundamentally cut off their budgetary reliance on fines and fees. Read more.

Colorado and Connecticut: Policing

Colorado responded to the Black Lives Matter protests with Senate Bill 217, a major reform detailed by the Denver Post. Most notably, the law ends police officers’ ability to claim qualified immunity in civil suits.

It also empowers the state’s attorney general to prosecute police officers, and sets new requirements for police departments to collect and disclose demographic information on their use of force, among other provisions. It was supported by state organizers such as Elisabeth Epps, an abolitionist advocate.

Connecticut adopted legislation to narrow qualified immunity, with loopholes. Its reform also expands transparency over disciplinary records and eased the process to decertify police officers, and codified a special office to investigate police killings.

New York: Policing

In response to renewed Black Lives Matter protests, New York has repealed Section 50-a, the state’s stringent statute that shields police officers’ disciplinary records. This has been a longtime demand of state advocates in the face of police departments’ ever-expanding use of Section 50-a to refuse disclosures.

New York also adopted a string of other laws. It codified a special prosecutor’s office to investigate police killings, it required officers to wear body cameras, and it criminalized the use of police chokeholds. Such statutes can be difficult to enforce, though, in the context of a culture of impunity, as NPR reports. (States including Connecticut, Iowa, and Minnesota, adopted similar bans this year.)

“Many of [these] policy changes … languished for years because of opposition from influential police and corrections unions,” the New York Times wrote.

National: Policing

The protests that have followed George Floyd’s killing jumpstarted legislative debates around policing. Connecticut Senator Gary Winfield, who has run into police unions when pushing police accountability bills in the past, says he will reintroduce measures such as ending qualified immunity.

Pennsylvania Democrats have introduced a plethora of bills, but the Republican leadership has blocked them from passing.

There’s a partisan confrontation in Wisconsin as well around Assembly Bill 1012, which would tighten criteria around what use of force is considered acceptable, and protect whistleblowers who report police brutality

Louisiana: Parole

Louisiana is one of the harshest states when it comes to sentencing people to life in prison. House Bill 173, signed into law by Governor John Bel Edwards, makes a dent into that: Some people who’ve been convicted for crimes they committed as children will now be eligible for parole after 25 years of incarceration if they fulfill a list of conditions. In addition, Edwards signed HB 643, which will allow parole officers to recommend a lesser level of supervision for someone who is on parole after either three or seven years depending on whether the underlying offense is classified as nonviolent; this would not change the fact that the individual remains on parole, setting him up to be reincarcerated even beyond the very lengthy period of intensive supervision.

Virginia has adopted a new law that decriminalizes the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana. It also seals past marijuana records.

Starting on July 1, people will face $25 fine instead of facing arrest and criminal charges. This is a big shift: There were more than 46,000 criminal cases in 2018 alone, disproportionately against African Americans. Virginia “will officially become the 27th state to remove the threat of jail time for possessing small amounts of marijuana,” Marijuana Moment reports.

This development follows the 2019 wins by prosecutors who ran on not prosecuting pot possession.

However, the reform falls short of legalization, which many pushed for. In addition, continued stops and policing is all but certain to disproportionately harm African Americans, as it has elsewhere in the country. Groups such as the ACLU of Virginia pushed for the state to go further in decoupling marijuana and law enforcement, and specifically to bar police from citing its smell to justify searching vehicles; legislative leaders resisted such steps.   

South Carolina

Prison conditions

House Bill 3967 was in danger of derailing when the pandemic sent lawmakers home in March. Instead, the legislature returned last week, promptly picked-up the bill (“unexpectedly,” the Post and Courier reports), and sent it to the governor who signed it within a day. 

This new law bans shackling women who are pregnant, in labor, or recovering from giving birth. It also requires that jails and prisons provide menstrual hygiene products. And it restricts the use of cavity searches and solitary confinement on women who are pregnant and within 30 days of giving birth.

Washington State

Expungements

Governor Jay Inslee vetoed legislation that would have made Washington the fourth state to adopt a “Clean Slate” law, reports Rachel Cohen in The Appeal: Political Report. It would have kicked off the process of automatically expunging some people’s records, without requiring them to go through a burdensome and often costly application process.

Inslee cited budgetary constrains brought on by COVID-19 to explain his veto, but advocates stress that it is crucial to speed up such reforms now to protect people with criminal records from the pandemic’s economic devastation.

Three pieces of legislation pertaining to the court system and to criminal justice reached some resolution the first week of May.

Two became law without Governor Larry Hogan’s signature (he faced a statutory deadline to act on them or just let them become law); Hogan vetoed the third.

Became law: new restrictions on driver’s license suspensions. Maryland will no longer suspend people’s driver’s licenses if they fail to pay fines and fees linked to traffic violations; the new law provides that the unpaid fines be referred to a collection agency. The bill applies retroactively, so many will be able to regain their licenses. Marceline White, executive director of the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition, called the law a “first step in reducing this vicious cycle of penalizing poor Marylanders and will enable people to get to work and repay their fines with dignity.” Virginia passed a bigger reform, which ended suspensions over any court debt, last month.

Became law: new restrictions on the use of jailhouse informants. “Time and again, when innocent people go to prison in Maryland, false testimony from jailhouse informants play a role,” the Baltimore Sun reported in February. House Bill 637 will create new restrictions on this practice. Among other measures, the Sun wrote, it will require a judge “to hold a hearing to assess the informant’s credibility” and prosecutors to “maintain a database of jailhouse witnesses.”

Vetoed: a bill to seal low-level marijuana convictions. This bill would have shielded marijuana convictions from public records. It would have benefited an estimated 200,000 Marylanders. Marijuana Moment reports that Hogan justified his veto as payback for lawmakers not passing his unrelated proposals to make state law more punitive toward violent crime. The legislature may override Hogan’s veto in 2021.

Other Maryland bills became law last week, including a ban on housing discrimination based on the tenant’s source of income and a repeal of the ban on sodomy. Hogan vetoed an effort to expand public transit.

Florida: Sentencing

State organizers made it a priority to soften the requirement that incarcerated people serve 85 percent of their sentences before being eligible for release. A bill that would have reduced that number to 65 percent died without being considered. Also, a bill to end the suspension of driver’s licenses over unpaid court debt advanced past multiple committees only to be ignored.

Indiana: Youth justice

Indiana was considering a punitive bill that would have treated more children as adults; it would have expanded the range of cases eligible for adult prosecution, and lowered to 12 the minimum age of adult prosecution for an expanded list of offenses. The Senate passed this bill in February. But the House did not take up the bill before adjourning.

Virginia: Death penalty

Since 2016, Virginia has shielded the identity of the suppliers of execution drugs from public disclosure; this was done because secrecy made it easier for executioners to obtain these drugs. (Other states have followed this approach.) The state then paid skyrocketing prices to a secret supplier to buy execution drugs.

This secrecy was lifted with the adoption of Senate Bill 270 this month. “If there are drugs that are manufactured to kill humans, I think people have the right to know about those drugs,” Democratic Senator John Bell, who introduced the bill, told the Virginia Mercury in February. 

Proposals to abolish the death penalty did not move forward in in the state this year, however.

Virginia: Parole reform

House Bill 33 is now law. It grants parole eligibility to most people sentenced between 1995 and 2000. Virginia eliminated parole in 1995, but did not require juries be informed of this when deciding sentences until 2000, when the state Supreme Court issued its Fishback ruling. About 350 people would benefit from this change. Northam asked lawmakers to make the bill effective immediately, rather than in June, because of the pandemic; they obliged last week.

There are two caveats, though. First, Virginia’s parole board seldom grants parole to those who have remained eligible, so expanding eligibility may not be sufficient absent other state changes. Second, lawmakers did not advance more ambitious bills that would have re-established parole in the state more broadly.

Kentucky

Voting rights

While the country debates how to run elections during a pandemic, the GOP-run legislature overrode Democratic Governor Andy Beshear’s veto and toughened Kentucky’s existing voter ID law. This move comes four months after Beshear restored the voting rights of about 140,000 people who have completed a felony sentence. The new voter ID law will disproportionately affect that population, Kira Lerner reported in The Appeal in January. “Kentucky does not have any system in place to help those leaving state prisons obtain a valid form of state ID,” she wrote.

Virginia

Voting rights & prison gerrymandering

Virginia is the latest state to end prison gerrymandering. The new law paves the way for Virginia to draw fairer maps, and adds to a tidal wave of state action against prison gerrymandering that seemed unthinkable just a year ago. Virginia is the nineth state to take action against prison gerrymandering.

The new laws do not change the state’s harsh felony disenfranchisement rules, though. Proposals to abolish or narrow those rules disenfranchisement are on the table, and advocates to press on the issue next year.

Read more in the Political Report.

Virginia

Fines and fees

Virginia will no longer suspend driver’s licenses because people owe court debt, thanks to legislation that was signed into law in April.

The state has been suspending hundreds of thousands of licenses each year, disproportionately those of African Americans and lower-income Virginians. The new law severs one of the pillars by which local and state governments enforce the unequal fines and fees system that their revenues often depend on.

Virginia is the eighth state to take this step.

Going forward, Virginia will continue suspending licenses on some circumstances unrelated to driving. Still, last week Northam also signed a separate law that ends suspensions over other grounds than unpaid debt, including over drug-related conviction.

Virginia

Youth justice

Virginia has adopted two laws relevant to youth justice. One requires that state prosecutors get a judge’s approval before treating kids younger than 16 as adults. But prosecutors will retain sole discretion over whether to prosecute 16- and 17-year olds in adult court. Other states have stripped them of that authority more fully. 

Another will allow judges to depart from mandatory minimum statutes when they decide the sentence of minors who are being tried in adult court. It requires judges to consider factors like early childhood trauma when deciding sentences. Before this law, a child’s sentence was effectively settled the moment they were charged and waived into adult court, with no consideration of other factors.

These laws add to a reform Virginia adopted in February to make all children eligible for parole.

Colorado

Death penalty, prison gerrymandering, and immigration

Colorado hit two major milestones this month, writes the Political Report. It abolished the death penatly, a long-sought win for criminal justice advocates. It also ended prison gerrymandering.

Nationwide efforts on both fronts have considerable momentum. Colorado is the 22nd state to repeal the death penalty, and the eighth to end or restrict prison gerrymandering.

Separately: SB 83 bars ICE from arresting people who are in or on their way to courthouses. “Advocates have documented cases of undocumented immigrants entering courthouses as defendants, witnesses or victims, and then getting detained by ICE agents,” the Denver Post reported in January.

Kentucky

Expungement

Kentucky’s governor signed into law a bill (HB 327) that directs courts to automatically expunge people’s records when their cases are dismissed or when they are acquitted.

Virginia

Parole reform and youth justice

Virginia will give hundreds of people who have been incarcerated for decades, ever since they were kids, a shot at petitioning for release. House Bill 35, which was signed into law in February, abolishes sentences of life without the possibility of parole for minors; Virginia is the 23rd state to take thsi step. Minors sentenced to sentences that amount to life in prison would also get some chance at parole.

This is a major turnaround for this punitive state, which largely eliminated parole for everyone in 1995; this has fueled Virginia’s growing, and aging, prisons. But the bill’s impact hinges on its parole board no longer denying the vast majority of applications it receives.

Maryland

Mandatory minimums

Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, is pushing a punitive bill that would increase sentences in Maryland, the Baltimore Sun reports, including imposing mandatory minimums for some offenses, and lengthening penalties for others. But Democratic leaders have signaled they will not go along with the legislation due to its new mandatory minimums. Hogan is now attacking them for endangering public safety. “If they don’t pass the bill, people are going to continue to die,” he said. Hogan targeted Senator William Smith. Indeed, Smith told the Political Report in January that Smith’s abrupt rise to a key committee chairmanship could “shuffle the politics of mass incarceration in Maryland.”

Arizona

Sentencing reform

Local organizers have rallied to soften the law that requires that incarcerated people serve 85 percent of their sentences before being eligible for release. These efforts moved by only a very small step last year. Now, Republican lawmaker Walter Blackman has now filed a bill that the Phoenix New Times calls “the most sweeping sentence reform for nonviolent offenders in Arizona since 1994.”

Yet bold reform may run into the same cast of opponents as last year; that includes DAs and Eddie Farnsworth, a Republican senator who chairs the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee. (Farnsworth has said he is not seeking re-election this year, which may alter the state landscape in 2021.)

Iowa and Washington

Voting rights and court debt

A bill to restore the right to vote to all citizens who are not in prison died in an acrimonious debate in Washington State’s Democrat-run Senate, as it had in 2019. Washington will continue to disenfranchise people who are in prison and on probation, as well as people who are unable to pay off their court debt; this is a similar rule as Florida’s 2019 law that critics decry as a poll tax, and which suffered a legal setback this month.

In Iowa, which is the only state to enforce permanent lifetime disenfranchisement over any felony conviction, the Senate keeps stalling on passage of a constitutional amendment in 2019 that would restore people’s voting rights upon completion of their sentences. Powerful senators are signaling that even if they advance the proposal, they plan to at least limit reform by adding carve-outs and tying the restoration to payment of financial obligations. The Iowa County Attorneys Association, the groups that lobbies on behalf of state prosecutors, also backs this proposal to tie voting to debt payments.   

Minnesota

Minnesota has an exceedingly high rate of people on probation (the country’s fifth highest), as the Star Tribune reported in 2017. That’s fueled by long terms: Some Minnesotans are sentenced to be on probation for decades; the average length is five and-a half years. This is a problem in terms of the massive number of people under supervision, but also because it drives incarceration as people are sentenced to prison over violations of their probation conditions. 

Probation reform

Minnesota’s 11-member Sentencing Guidelines Commission has now approved a presumptive five-year cap on probation terms, with some carve-outs. The cap, a longtime goal for state reformers, comes into effect in August unless it is overridden by the legislature, which is sharply partisan and has shown little ability to pass major measures. (A bill to introduce a cap stalled last year.) The cap would not apply retroactively, however.

New Jersey has adopted a new law that ends prison gerrymandering in legislative redistricting, reports the Appeal: Political Report. That is the practice of counting incarcerated people at their prison’s location; the new law provides instead that people will instead be counted at their most recent address.

The reform has limits: It only applies to legislative redistricting, and people who are incarcerated remain disenfranchised. New Jersey is the seventh state to end prison gerrymandering for legislative redistricting. The clock is ticking for states to adopt reforms by the next round of redistricting.

Besides ending prison gerrymandering, New Jersey adopted a series of other laws relevant to the criminal legal system this month.

1. Senate Bill 761 enables people incarcerated over some low-level offenses to petition for parole up to six months before their current eligibility date, and to not go through a full hearing; the state estimates that up to 2,000 people a year will qualify for early release as a result.

2. SB 48 tackles the youth justice system. It eliminates fines for offenses adjudicated as juvenile, and it also ends the mandate that minors who finish their term of incarceration serve more supervision. But the bill was considerably weakened right before its adoption last week so that it no longer meaningfully expands early release; an earlier version aimed for the state’s parole board to no longer have a veto over whether minors should be released. 

3. SB 2055 makes incarcerated people eligible to apply for state aid for higher education programs.

4. SB 1963 and SB 4970 reform civil asset forfeiture rules. One bill creates a requirement that police departments release quarterly forfeiture reports; the information will be available on a public database. The other requires that people be convicted before their assets are seized, but it only applies to cases that involve under $1,000 in cash or $10,000 in property; that falls quite a bit short of the reform Arkansas adopted just last year.

New legislative efforts take off for 2020

In Arizona, proposals to soften the state’s harsh “truth in sentencing” statutes failed in 2019 but are back this year. The Appeal reports on one GOP-sponsored bill that would reduce the sentences of the people whom Arizona sends to fight wildfires.

In Colorado, a Democratic senator is pushing to reform the state’s felony murder laws by taking life without the possibility of parole off the table.

In Delaware, advocates are planning a wide-ranging push after 2019 successes.

In Florida, lawmakers have filed bills to restrict the circumstances in which children can be detained, restrict felony murder, curb driver’s license suspensions, enable people sentenced while younger than age 25 to get a “second look,” and curb mandatory minimum laws, including for people convicted of a repeat offense.

In Nebraska, senators have introduced a bill to end prison gerrymandering and a constitutional amendment to abolish disenfranchisement.

In New York, the Brooklyn Eagle offers a comprehensive look at 15 major bills that lawmakers may tackle in 2020. The list features proposals to restrict solitary confinement, expand parole for people over the age of 55, abolish disenfranchisement, and better investigate the police.

In at least Oklahoma, Virginia and Wyoming, advocates are pushing to abolish the death penalty. Abolition came close in Wyoming in 2019.

Also, California‘s governor released a budget with a number of reform proposals. Illinois‘s wants to tackle ending cash bail. Virginia‘s released a slate of proposals including increased funding for public defenders, and eligibility for parole for people above age 50 and 55 who have served lengthy sentences. And Wisconsin‘s has said a 2020 priority will be limiting solitary confinement.

National retrospective

State legislatures this year abolished the death penalty, legalized or decriminalized pot, expanded voting rights for people with felony convictions, restricted solitary confinement, and made it harder to prosecute minors as adults, among other initiatives.

Read the Political Report’s retrospective of the year that was—by theme and with seven maps. And yes, each state shows up.

New York: Child welfare systems

In late December, Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed two bills that aimed to reform the child welfare system. The first would have required more evidence for the state to list parents on a state abuse or neglect registry; the second would have enabled judges to order an open adoption in cases of adoption after foster care. Commentary on both bills appeared in The Appeal in November.

Wisconsin

Sexual offense registries

Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, vetoed a bill that would have repealed the ban on people convicted of a sexual offense living within 1,500 feet of schools or parks. Such residency restrictions create major issues for people with criminal records, fueling homelessness and cutting them off from families and employment opportunities.

While rolling back such restrictions is perceived to be politically difficult, this bill had passed the GOP-run legislature unanimously; it even had support from state DAs. Dan Feyen, a GOP senator who sponsored the bill, told me via an email from a spokesperson that he was “frustrated and incredibly disappointed,” and that residency limits push people on supervised release leave people “to be more isolated.” The legislature could seek to override Evers’s veto in 2020. Feyen said he is “optimistic that [the bill] would maintain support.”

Kentucky and New Jersey

Rights restoration

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed into law a bill to enable any adult citizen who is not incarcerated to vote. People on parole and probation were disenfranchised until now. The law will restore the rights of about 80,000 people.

Just a week before, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear issued an executive order to restore the right to vote of people with nonviolent felonies once they complete their sentence. Beshear, whose order still leaves many Kentuckians disenfranchised, also called on the legislature to adopt a constitutional amendment codifying it into law.