A proposed article in the FY 2022 budget contained several important criminal justice proposals, including provisions providing for geriatric parole and making critical adjustments to statutes concerning community confinement, work-release wages, and parole reform. However, we urged that a section commendably providing young people sentenced to lengthy prison sentences the ability to come before the parole board for consideration after ten years to be amended to explicitly ban “life without parole” sentences for juveniles.
The version of the article which passed in the budget included all of the aforementioned provisions. However, "life without parole" sentences for juveniles remained excluded from parole consideration after a certain number of years, and the juvenile sentencing provisions were amended to instead make juveniles sentenced to lengthy prison sentences able to come before the parole board after twenty years, rather than the ten years originally provided for.
