Second Chance CA
We believe in public safety, fiscal responsibility, and the human capacity to change. By fixing an unfair gap in the law, we can keep communities safe, save taxpayer dollars, and promote a criminal system that values rehabilitation.
We’re a growing movement to make California’s law more just. It includes many organizations and individuals who believe California can do better.
Together, we represent families, faith, labor, business, and community voices who all agree on one simple idea: fairness should be the standard. The solution already exists in California law. It’s time to fix the gap and provide the same opportunity to all young people.
Mission and Vision
Our vision is to create a legal system in California that is consistent, fair, and rooted in equal opportunity. Our mission is to ensure that people who were 25 or younger at the time of their crime and sentenced to life without parole have the same opportunity to earn parole as their peers with comparable crimes and equally long sentences.
Why a Change in Law is Needed
California’s justice system can both hold young people accountable for their actions and provide a pathway for rehabilitation.
Life without parole (LWOP) is a sentence to remain in prison until you die. If you have LWOP in the United States, you’re condemned to prison for the rest of your life, with no opportunity for release. Some call it the slow death penalty.
Research has unequivocally demonstrated that young people are neurologically developing into their mid-20s. They have tremendous capacity to grow, mature, and become rehabilitated.
Over the years, laws have been reformed to reflect what science tells us about the capacity for human growth—especially among young people—but an unfair gap in the law exists. Youth under age 18 are no longer sentenced to mandatory life without parole sentences. And, young people age 18 to 25 who received extremely long sentences —sentences that are not called “life without parole” but are functionally the same, for example, 65, 75, 100 or more years— have a chance to prove if they have rehabilitated after 25 years in prison.
But when a young person convicted of a crime that is no different from these is sentenced to LWOP, they don’t get the chance to work towards parole. It means that two people who commit similar crimes at the same age can end up with completely different futures – not because of their actions or who they are after decades of being incarcerated, but because of the way their crimes were charged, or whether a prosecutor chose to review a sentence.
This is an inexplicit gap in the law, and one that is profoundly arbitrary and unfair.
What does a second chance mean? Only have a 14% of eligible people earn a grant of parole. But those who do, leave prison and less than 1% ever commit a felony again. It is a cautious process that we know works with this population: Young people who are given a second chance respond by giving back to society.
