Throughout the U.S., tough-on-crime insurance policies are surging once more, regardless of analysis exhibiting they do little to scale back crime, notably violent offenses.
Earlier than the early Nineteen Nineties, individuals who have been sentenced to 10 years in jail may be launched after serving roughly half that lengthy. That’s due to insurance policies that allowed incarcerated people to earn credit score for good habits or, in some states, to keep away from dropping credit they already held towards an early launch. These so-called “good time” insurance policies have been created by states to encourage good habits and rehabilitation and to scale back jail overcrowding.
However within the Nineteen Nineties, when nationwide politics was targeted on crime charges, Congress inspired states to undertake so-called “truth-in-sentencing” legal guidelines, which required individuals to serve not less than 85% of their jail sentence.
As analysis highlighted the inefficacy and unintended penalties of those legal guidelines, states rolled them again or modified them, largely by partially repealing them or lowering the severity of obligatory sentences.
Some efforts to roll again harsh sentencing guidelines proceed: In Illinois, historically a frontrunner in legal justice reform, one invoice that might soften truth-in-sentencing necessities has stalled, although one other was launched in January 2025.
However in lots of different states, truth-in-sentencing legal guidelines and different related legal guidelines that impose longer sentences are making a comeback, notably for violent crimes.
Since 2023, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Dakota and Tennessee have handed truth-in-sentencing legal guidelines. North Dakota is now contemplating related laws. In November 2024, Colorado voters required individuals convicted of violent crimes to serve greater percentages of their sentences, which is the same transfer, although it didn’t bear the “truth-in-sentencing” label.
A private lens on the subject
These legal guidelines have actual results on actual individuals.
In 1998, I used to be sentenced to 22 years within the Illinois Division of Corrections for a gang-related violent crime I dedicated as a juvenile. I served simply 11 of these years below a long-standing coverage that allowed people to serve half their sentence with good habits.
But when I had been arrested simply 100 days later, a truth-in-sentencing legislation would have taken impact, and I might have needed to serve the total 22 years.
Eleven years is a very long time. Since my launch in 2012, I’ve earned a bachelor’s diploma, a grasp’s diploma and a Ph.D. I’m now a university professor, creator, husband and father.
If I had been required to serve my full sentence, I might have been launched in 2023, older and with fewer alternatives for schooling, rehabilitation and rebuilding my life.
As a substitute of with the ability to begin my schooling on the age of 30, I might have entered the world in my forties, making it a lot tougher to pursue a decade of education to grow to be a professor. The delay would have additionally made it tougher to start out a household, forcing me to stability career-building with the difficulties of getting kids later in life.
Incarcerated graduates, who completed numerous instructional and vocational applications in jail, anticipate the beginning of their commencement ceremony in Could 2023.
AP Photograph/Jae C. Hong
Not deterring crime
Supporters of truth-in-sentencing legal guidelines say they’re meant to extend accountability for wrongdoing and deter crime. The logic can appear fairly intuitive: If individuals know they’ll obtain a harsher punishment, they are going to be much less more likely to commit specific crimes.
However analysis finds that these are usually not the outcomes. There isn’t any compelling proof that punitive sentencing insurance policies discourage people from partaking in legal exercise.
And states with out truth-in-sentencing legal guidelines have seen their crime charges fall to roughly the identical diploma as states which have the legal guidelines.
Harming society at massive
Analysis additionally finds that truth-in-sentencing legal guidelines trigger far-reaching harms to individuals convicted of crimes and to society at massive, undermining each rehabilitation and public security.
As a result of truth-in-sentencing legal guidelines give attention to deterrence, they don’t deal with the causes of legal habits, comparable to poverty and childhood trauma.
These legal guidelines additionally make prisons much less secure: They take away incentives for individuals in jail to comply with the principles, get an schooling, take part in psychotherapy or in any other case have interaction in optimistic actions whereas behind bars.
The overwhelming majority of incarcerated individuals – six out of each seven inmates – are launched into society once more. Underneath truth-in-sentencing legal guidelines, they emerge from jail much less ready to comply with the legal guidelines than they might have been if they’d entry to instructional applications, remedy and an incentive construction that inspired rehabilitation whereas incarcerated.
A research in Georgia, for example, discovered that after stricter sentencing necessities have been enacted, inmates topic to the brand new guidelines dedicated extra disciplinary infractions and took part in fewer rehabilitation applications in jail. And as soon as launched, they have been extra more likely to commit new crimes than launched inmates who had not been topic to the stricter sentences.
Costing taxpayers dearly
Moreover, the monetary burden of those legal guidelines is critical.
For instance, Arkansas’ truth-in-sentencing legislation, handed in 2023, is projected to value the state’s taxpayers not less than US$160 million over the following decade to pay for elevated jail capability and staffing.
As a substitute of deterring crime, truth-in-sentencing legal guidelines lock extra individuals up for longer durations of time with out addressing the underlying elements, which strains already overburdened correctional techniques.
These legal guidelines additionally disproportionately have an effect on individuals of coloration, exacerbating systemic inequities within the legal justice system.
These individuals incarcerated in a California jail are studying laptop programming.
AP Photograph/Eric Risberg
A special path
For me, the potential of incomes good-time credit score was a robust motivator to have interaction in rehabilitative actions and regain misplaced time after disciplinary infractions.
After I started my sentence, Illinois legislation allowed individuals to obtain a 50% discount of their sentence by good-time credit score: I would must serve solely half of my authentic 22-year sentence, and be launched after 11 years, if I maintained good habits.
Breaking the principles would value credit score, extending my time in jail past that fifty% mark. Early in my sentence, I broke the principles and was positioned in isolation – additionally known as segregation or restrictive housing, in a cell for twenty-four hours a day, aside from six hours of train per week – for a complete of 18 months, leading to a big lack of my good-time credit score. Consequently, as an alternative of serving 11 years, my anticipated time in jail elevated to roughly 12.5 years.
This setback was a turning level. I knew that my actions had straight affected the size of time I must spend in jail. I turned decided to earn again my misplaced time. I targeted on staying out of bother, incomes my GED, finishing my affiliate diploma and enrolling in out there applications. I used to be capable of regain my time credit score and needed to serve solely 11 years.
Underneath immediately’s truth-in-sentencing legal guidelines, none of this might have been potential. I might have been required to serve my full sentence, no matter whether or not I selected to vary, rehabilitate or put together for all times after jail. The power to scale back my sentence by good habits and academic achievement gave me a tangible incentive to show my life round, a possibility that truth-in-sentencing legal guidelines eradicate.
A method ahead
Against this, investing in rehabilitation not solely improves outcomes for these incarcerated but additionally makes communities safer by lowering the cycle of crime.
Analysis exhibits that in-prison rehabilitation applications – notably these centered on schooling and vocational coaching applications and social-support providers comparable to housing assist, psychological well being care and job placement help – scale back recidivism charges. Whereas in jail, persons are held accountable whereas additionally having alternatives to develop and be taught, making ready for profitable reintegration into society after their launch.
I consider that within the overwhelming majority of individuals in jail, there’s potential for redemption – however that potential is almost certainly to emerge after they have alternatives to be taught and develop and obtain advantages for making modifications of their lives.
Sadly, many states are selecting to spend thousands and thousands locking up extra individuals for longer durations – whereas giving them much less alternative to enhance themselves and their lives, lowering their potential for change and secure, productive reintegration into society upon launch.