Legislation designed to move thousands of nonviolent criminals out of Pennsylvania prisons more quickly and rein in booming correctional costs is nearing final approval, reports the Associated Press. The bill, approved by the Senate yesterday 48-2, is regarded as the biggest change to the state’s criminal-justice system in many years.
Nonviolent drug offenders in prison could be resentenced to an addiction-treatment program, and nonviolent offenders who behaved well and completed certain programs could be paroled more quickly. The hope is that with rehabilitation, fewer convicts would return to crime after their release, and that the state could slow the growth of a prison population that has quadrupled in the last 25 years to 46,800.