Nearly half of inmates with reduced sentences under a Democrat-backed Virginia sentencing law were arrested again within a year of being released, according to the state’s top prosecutor.
Republican Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares’s office revealed the statistics in a Wednesday press release slamming the state’s Enhanced Earned Sentence Credits (EESC) law, calling on legislators to “fix” the program. Activists for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have argued that the law shows mercy to well-behaved inmates facing harsh sentences, but violent crime victims said otherwise at a Wednesday press conference with Miyares.
“My son would still be alive if his offender had still been in custody,” said Virginia mother Angela Tyler-Tann, whose son was murdered by a man who secured early release under the EESC program despite six felonies and 13 probation violations on his record, according to Miyares’s office. “People’s lives are not video games that can be paused or re-started. My son’s death is final. He does not get a second chance.”
First 18 Months of Eesc Data by Hudson Crozier on Scribd
In another case, a child rapist who benefitted from the program “repeatedly” raped an 11-year-old days after his early release, Mirayes’s office said.
Former Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam signed the EESC program into law in 2020, allowing inmates serving time for solicitation to murder, robbery, sexual assault and other offenses to receive more credit toward an earlier sentence. Prior to the law, Virginia required felons to serve at least 85% of their sentence.
When EESC was first implemented for a full year in fiscal year 2023, 49.8% of inmates freed under the program were arrested again within that year alone, Miyares’s office said, citing the Virginia Department of Corrections. Early data for fiscal year 2024 show that 35.5% of convicts released through the initiative were already locked up again.
Before the law took effect, only 17.6% of inmates released in fiscal year 2020 were arrested a second time within three years, WVEC-TV reported.
Republicans have resisted the EESC program since it passed in 2020, with Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin stalling implementation through budget proposals that blocked the sentencing credits for certain offenders, according to Courthouse News Service. The ACLU’s Virginia chapter filed four lawsuits to fight for implementation of the law before it went into full effect on July 1.
The ACLU’s Virginia chapter did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Even though Republicans limited the law’s impact for years, it has had the opposite effect on public safety that Democrats promised, said Miyares, who is running for reelection in November.
“These aren’t ‘one-offs’ — they are sons, daughters, and parents who should still be alive … It’s time for the [legislature] to admit its mistake and fix what it broke,” Miyares said.
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