Tennessee lawmakers could make big changes to criminal sentences in 2022

Tennessee’s legislature is expected to consider major changes to the state’s criminal sentencing guidelines in the new session. But those changes could take two drastically different directions.

Some want to make it easier for people to get out of prison. Others want to make it harder.

At the center of this debate is early release. In some case, that’s through a program that allows people to leave prison early, as long as they follow certain rules — like getting a job and not using drugs. If they break the rules, they can be sent back to prison. Other times, it’s through a program that gives them time off their sentences for good behavior.

Current law uses a formula to determine the length of a person’s sentence and the percentage of that sentence they need to serve before becoming eligible for release. Those calculations vary from case to case.

One person, for instance, could go home after serving 20% of their sentence. But someone convicted of first-degree murder, on the other hand, must serve a larger percentage of their sentence. According to Tennessee law, they have to spend more than half a century behind bars before they can even be eligible for release.

Some advocates for reform want people to be eligible after serving less time, like Rafiah McCormick, whose son was killed in 2020. She wants the person who shot her son to have the opportunity to go home and mentor others.

“I can’t get my son back,” McCormick said at a press conference outside the Tennessee State Capitol on Tuesday morning. “But if the person that took my son’s life’s redemption includes that person potentially saving others from being shooters or victims, then my son’s death is not in vain.”

But some legislators want the state to use early release even less than it does now.

House Majority Leader William Lamberth, a former prosecutor, plans to propose a bill that would get rid of early release for the most serious crimes, including murder, rape and sex trafficking. For the rest of felony cases, judges would choose from a narrower range of sentences.

That way, he says, no one will be surprised when people go home from prison.

“We should be able to tell victims exactly how long a criminal who has harmed them will spend behind bars,” Lamberth wrote in an op-ed published in multiple local news outlets.

He added that the new system would also help corrections officials to plan ahead for people’s release.

Truth in sentencing

Lamberth’s proposal hearkens back to a concept popularized in the 1990s tough-on-crime era, called “truth in sentencing.” The idea is that the sentence someone receives will reflect the actual amount of time they’ll spend behind bars.

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 offered federal funding to states that implemented so-called truth in sentencing laws, which limited their use of early release. Many states, including Tennessee, followed suit, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Incarceration rates in the U.S. were already on the rise at that point. Since then, Tennessee’s prison population has continued to climb.

In 2019, Gov. Bill Lee’s criminal justice investment task force urged legislators to rewrite the state’s sentencing code, to reduce the number of people in lockup. The group found that the number of people in Tennessee prisons had increased in the past decade even as it declined in most other states — not because more people were being admitted, but because they were spending longer amounts of time behind bars.

State data show the prison population has declined during the pandemic, from an average of 30,242 in fiscal year 2019 to 25,459 in fiscal year 2021. But if fewer people are released early, there’s a chance those numbers could go up again.

Attorney David Esquivel is hopeful that the new sentencing code will give judges more power to choose sentences that fit the unique circumstances of each case, especially when it comes to juveniles.

Under current law, teens who are sentenced to life in prison must serve at least 51 years in prison before they can be eligible for early release, just like adults. Esquivel says that violates a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that determined juveniles should have a “meaningful opportunity” for life after incarceration, given the reduced life expectancies of people in custody. His team will make that argument before the state Supreme Court in February.

“Unless there is a change to the mandatory minimum sentence,” he says, “we are essentially saying that every juvenile who is convicted of first-degree murder has a minuscule percentage chance to ever leave prison.”

Blaise Gainey contributed reporting.