Pennsylvania has the second highest percentage of our citizens on parole in the country, and the highest incarceration rate in the Northeast. Research shows that we have one of the highest rates of carceral control in the entirety of the Western world. Over the past few years, criminal justice advocacy groups including the Sentencing Project and the Coalition for Parole Justice have called for policies that would provide opportunities for ending lengthy periods of parole that no longer serve any benefit to public safety, while simultaneously reducing the potential for individuals to suffer from minor technical violations.
 
For this reason, I will be introducing legislation that gives individuals who are 40 years of age or older, and who have served at least five years of consecutive parole supervision, the opportunity to petition the court for an early termination of their parole sentence.
 
The statistics are clear on this – individuals over the age of 40 have some of the lowest recidivism rates of all justice-involved people, and individuals who do not re-offend within the first three to five years of their release are unlikely to ever do so.
 
I look forward to your support for this legislation. It is time for Pennsylvania to move forward in transforming our criminal justice system to address the key drivers of incarceration and focus our resources on individuals when they are at the greatest risk of reoffending rather than re-arresting them for minor technicalities years down the line.