We Can Build on Recent Reforms to Advance Public Safety and Strengthen Communities
Thankfully, in recent years, Mississippi leaders have recognized the need to address the state’s dangerously high prison population. In 2014, leaders passed HB 585, which relied on data-driven policies to pass some changes to the state’s sentencing laws. This policy incentivizes people to participate in rehabilitative programming and follow facility rules and their supervision conditions and limits revocations for technical violations where people do not commit a new offense. Unfortunately, many of these provisions have not been fully implemented, blunting the impact of this policy by preventing people from coming home to their communities and reentering the workforce.
And in 2021, state leaders overwhelmingly voted to expand parole to allow more individuals to demonstrate their rehabilitation to the parole board and be released. Fortunately, within about 6 months of expanding parole, Mississippi’s prison population reached its lowest point in 20 years. Unfortunately, that impact was short-lived, and in 2022, the population increased by about 3,000 people, in part because parole was not being fully implemented. With an increase in parole grant rates, the population steadied in 2023.
As we know, these legislative changes are necessary, but implementation is critical for the state to realize the benefits to families, communities, and even businesses, of safely reducing the prison population. By fully utilizing parole laws, removing unnecessary earned time restrictions, and ending revocations for technical parole violations, Mississippi can continue safely reducing the prison population while advancing public safety.
Our leaders enacted changes like parole expansion because they are backed by years of research and have been shown to decrease recidivism and make communities safer. Over the last decade, we’ve seen 37 states – including Texas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee – reduce crime at the same time that they reduce incarceration, so we know it can be done.
In the upcoming session, Mississippi leaders must take action to ensure that parole is continued, without a repealer, so that it can continue to be used as a tool to help safely reduce the prison population. It is an essential, data-backed mechanism that allows incarcerated people to demonstrate their rehabilitation and be considered for release on an individual basis by the Parole Board. As highlighted in recent polling, nearly 90% of Mississippi voters support allowing people to earn their way home through the parole process.
Additionally, our leaders must address what’s driving our stubbornly high prison population. Based on a recent analysis, simple drug possession was the top offense on admission to prison in Mississippi accounting for 1 in every 6 people entering MDOC custody in the last six months of 2022. At the end of last year, there were 1500 people in prison for simple drug possession in Mississippi. In 2016, Oklahoma reclassified drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor, a commonsense policy change that Mississippi could adopt to safely reduce the prison population and divert people to mental health and substance use treatment instead of prison.
As we look to the 2024 session, our leaders must advance data-driven policies that will safely reduce incarceration, ensure we keep parole eligibility, and continue to pursue other commonsense reforms that will improve public safety, boost our workforce, and help our state thrive.
