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http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01c821gp012| Title: | Executive inaction: States and the federal government fail to use commutations as a release mechanism |
| Contributors: | Awan, Naila Quandt, Katie Rose |
| Keywords: | Prisoners—Deinstitutionalization—United States Parole—United States |
| Issue Date: | Apr-2022 |
| Publisher: | Prison Policy Initiative |
| Place of Publication: | Northampton, MA |
| Description: | In 2021, at the request of advocates working on clemency reform in the northeast, we submitted records requests to eight northeastern states seeking information about their commutation processes. As our survey of these eight states finds, state executive branches also chronically underuse their commutation powers. The states in our sample reported granting just 210 commutations from 2005 through mid-2021, for a total average of 13 grants a year across the eight states. For comparison, the average total prison population across these eight states from 2005 to 2020 was about 130,000 — meaning that each year, this group of states commuted about one out of every 10,000 sentenced and imprisoned individuals. In fact, five of the states each reported granting just five commutations or fewer over the 16.5 years for which we requested data. And almost no states in the sample increased their rate of commutations during the pandemic. |
| URI: | http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01c821gp012 |
| Related resource: | https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/commutations.html |
| Appears in Collections: | Monographic reports and papers (Publicly Accessible) |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExecutiveInaction.pdf | 3.79 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Download |
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