Commuted Sentences: Could You Ask for More?
By Austin Moylan*Full Article.I. IntroductionThe United States is home to approximately 330 million people.[1] Strikingly, 2.3 million of them are behind bars.[2] For every 100,000 people in the United States, nearly 700 are in prison, an incarceration rate unmatched by any other country.[3] And despite having only 4% of the world’s population, the United States has an estimated one-third of the world’s prisoners serving life sentences.[4]The problems caused by mass incarceration are varied and significant. Annual spending on corrections at the state level alone totaled almost $57 billion in 2015.[5] And there appears to be little payoff either, as recidivism rates remain high; three quarters of those released from prison will be arrested within five years and over half will end up back in prison.[6] The lack of payoff is…