California’s Resentencing Program Shows Financial and Social Benefits, Study Finds

Micah recalled the moment she got a second chance.

In 2023, more than two decades after prosecutors sent her to prison on a drug conviction that triggered the state’s three-strikes law, she received an envelope from the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s office.

She was baffled.

“There was like a little Post-it note in there — contact an attorney or your attorney,” said Micah, who was serving a 28-year-to-life sentence when she received the notice. “I’m thinking, man, it’s been 24 years. I can’t think of anything that I could be charged with!”

Micah, who now works at a charitable thrift shop in Contra Costa County, is among a relatively small group of people who were released thanks to a state-funded program that encourages district attorneys to resentence incarcerated people serving long prison terms that many now consider excessive.

From 2021–23, the California County Resentencing Pilot Program provided nearly $13 million to counties to help encourage the reevaluation of long sentences.

Nine counties in the state participated, including Contra Costa, San Francisco and Santa Clara counties in the Bay Area. KQED is withholding Micah’s full name because she fears being stigmatized after having served a long prison sentence.

Of the 50,000 people incarcerated in the participating counties, courts ultimately resentenced 227 people and released 174, according to a report published in February by RAND, the California-based nonprofit selected by the state Legislature to independently evaluate the pilot.

Lou Mariano, a senior statistician with RAND, said the figures are modest but indicate progress.

“These nine counties did review well over 1,100 cases for eligibility, so there was a significant effort that was in place,” said Mariano, who noted that the counties also used their own funds, more than doubling the budget for time-intensive case review and processing over the pilot period. “The cases reviewed showed a clear alignment with that original motivation of responding to ‘get tough’ legislation in the late ’90s.”

The Violent Crime Control Act, passed during the Clinton administration, took a punitive approach that has been credited with fueling mass incarceration but had no major impact on crime rates. In California, the prison population exploded from about 50,000 prisoners in 1985 to a peak of 173,000 in 2006.

In 2018, California legislators passed AB 2942 in an effort to pursue major criminal justice reform. The law redefined the purpose of sentencing for public safety to include punishment, rehabilitation and restorative justice. The bipartisan law allowed district attorneys to recommend courts reconsider old cases, including those associated with violent crimes.

While counties determined their own criteria for resentencing — including factors such as age and case details — all prioritized candidates had already served many years behind bars and still had significant time left on their sentences.

The state spends about $133,000 per incarcerated person annually in state prison, making resentencing cases a source of financial savings.

According to the RAND report, the state would have needed to reduce each of the 174 released individuals’ sentences by just 1.2 years to break even, considering the millions invested by the state and counties in the pilot program. The results exceeded that number: About three-quarters of those considered for resentencing had served more than 10 years in prison, and the majority still had more than five years to go.

RAND’s report also recommends more clearly defined roles to improve cooperation between prosecutors and public defenders, better timelines and a dedicated court for resentencing hearings.

“We don’t want to ever throw out someone and say they’re worthless, and we’re never going to look at their case again. This seemed to be a continuation of that value,” said Santa Clara County Assistant District Attorney David Angel.

Angel said his office had already embraced resentencing efforts for death penalty cases and was eager to expand the work to include others who had served long sentences they might not receive today. He said his office conducted 150 reviews as part of the pilot, ending in 14 new sentences, including 13 releases.

“We’re dedicated to keep doing it. We think it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “I certainly hope the state invests in this again.”

Most counties initially focused on cases with excessive sentences before expanding criteria to include crimes against persons, said Andrea Crider, a UC Berkeley law lecturer and former Contra Costa County public defender.

According to Crider, the resentencing work in Contra Costa included “an opportunity to provide victim-offender dialogue so that victims could have closure for past crimes and have harm reduction in that sense, too.”

Micah was one of Crider’s clients. Crider said Micah worked hard to take advantage of programming while incarcerated, eventually becoming a mentor to other incarcerated people. Once released, with some reentry support from the county, Micah said she quickly built on all the years she spent rehabilitating on the inside.

She said she believes more people deserve a second chance.

“Look beyond the case. Look to see how many years they’ve served and how they’ve served it,” Micah said. “Look at that part. I think that’s important.”