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Want to tackle mass incarceration? Cap most sentences at 20 years, expert suggests

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Life sentences have expanded exponentially in recent decades, and the result is an inflationary effect on all sentences, according to a sentencing-reform advocate.

There’s a way to reverse the trend, according to Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project. Cap sentences at 20 years in prison, except in exceptional cases, Mauer told the Justice Department’s Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections in testimony last week. The Marshall Project posted his remarks.

Congress could bar sentences longer than 20 years except for individuals who present an undue risk to public safety, Mauer testified. Lesser penalties could also be reduced to keep sentences proportional, he said.

Mauer cited these points in support of his proposal:

• Recidivism declines as offenders reach their 30s and 40s. “As a result, for each successive year of incarceration there are diminishing returns for crime control,” Mauer says.

• Offenders released from life sentences were less than one third as likely to be re-arrested within three years compared to other released inmates.

• Health-care costs for aging prisoners can be extremely expensive.

The nine-member Colson Task Force is charged with making the federal prison system safer, less costly and more humane, according to its its leader, former U.S. Rep. J.C. Watts Jr., R-Okla. One of the members is Jim Liske, president and CEO of Prison Fellowship Ministries, a group formed by Colson after his imprisonment for obstruction of justice in the Watergate probe, the Religion News Service reported in December.