In Cook County Jail, you can find senior citizens who’ve done two decades or more of time for a nonviolent offense, had plenty of opportunity to rethink their lives and now represent no real danger to anyone. Cannot reasonable people agree that there is a case for rethinking their initial sentence with a view to letting them out before they die in jail?
There’s ample evidence that older people commit less crime. And once a person reaches a certain point in their lives, additional years of incarceration serve no obvious purpose. On the contrary, some of these longtime inmates could be out telling their stories to young people, suggesting an alternate path. They are well positioned to do so.
That’s why we’re sympathetic to the idea of Cook County prosecutors going back to court to suggest that in certain cases, a new, more measured sentence might now be more appropriate. Perhaps a thief has come to care much less about stealing fancy cars or designer duds. Maybe someone doing time for drug possession (in some cases, a lot of time) has gotten clean in jail and no longer will touch the stuff. And drug use doesn’t just result in prosecutions for drug offenses; addiction fuels many other crimes.
