The People We Sentenced: The People They've Become

Second-look sentencing, the science of redemption and the voices Kentucky has yet to hear.

Who speaks for the people who have spent decades behind prison walls, long after the public stopped paying attention to their sentences?

A 2025 study published in Criminology, Public Support for Universal Second Look Sentencing: A Research Note, examines an important question: Are Americans willing to reconsider lengthy prison sentences when individuals have demonstrated meaningful change?

The findings caught my attention for reasons extending beyond the research itself. Two of the study’s authors, Paula Smith and Amanda Pompoco were once my professors at the University of Cincinnati, where I earned my master’s degree in criminal justice with a concentration in Rehabilitation & Corrections. Working with individuals serving lengthy and indefinite prison sentences, I find myself returning to many of the questions that shaped my graduate education: What does rehabilitation actually mean? How do we measure meaningful change? And perhaps more important, what happens when the justice system recognizes the importance of rehabilitation but provides little opportunity for that rehabilitation to influence a person’s future?

These are no longer academic questions for me. These are questions I encounter in my professional work and in my advocacy for people whose lives have unfolded behind the razor wire for decades. 

Many of those individuals have no family, advocates, or financial resources to speak on their behalf. Their stories remain unhear, their accomplishments unrecognized, and their possibilities unexplored. If we are serious about rehabilitation, shouldn’t we be willing to see the person-and consider the possibility?

Some entered prison as teens or young adults. Others were older. Some received life sentences with the possibility of parole. Others were sentenced with little or no expectation of ever returning home.

Decades have passed.

They have grown older. Their parents have died. Their children have become adults. The communities they once knew have changed, often beyond their recognition.

Many of them have changed as well.

Some have pursued higher education, confronted the harm they caused, participated in treatment, mentored younger incarcerated persons, and devoted years and decades to helping others avoid the mistakes that brought them to prison.

Yet for many, their own stories remain largely untold.

We know a great deal about the crimes that sent people to prison. We know far less about the lives they’ve lived in the decades since.

A sentence imposed decades ago may still be legally valid. But does that mean it should never

be reconsidered?

That question lies at the heart of the growing movement for second-look sentencing. A 2025 study published in Criminology suggests that the American public might be more open to reconsidering lengthy prison sentences than many assume.

What Research Tells Us About Second Chances

In Public Support for Universal Second Look Sentencing: A Research Note, researchers Paula Smith, Amanda Graham, Francis T. Cullen, Justin T. Pickett, Cheryl Lero Jonson, Kellie R. Hannan, and Amanda Pompoco examined public attitudes toward judicial reconsideration of lengthy prison sentences.

Using a national YouGov Survey of 800 respondents conducted in 2023, the researchers found majority support for universal second-look sentencing, with only 19.1% opposed or strongly opposed.

What makes this particularly significant is that the researchers did not limit their examination to people who committed crimes as juveniles or young adults.

They explored whether individuals who committed crimes at older ages should also have an opportunity for reconsideration after serving 15-20 years.

The findings suggest that public support for sentence review extends beyond the young.

Perhaps, even more important was what the researchers discovered about redeemability, the belief that someone who committed a serious offense can change.

The researchers found that evidence of completed rehabilitation programs, positive recommendations from prison leadership, and support from victims or their families increased respondents’’ willingness to consider release.

In hypothetical cases where all three favorable factors were present, approximately 6 in 10 respondents supported release immediately or within one to two years.

This doesn’t mean the public favors releasing everyone who has served a lengthy sentence. It means that evidence of rehabilitation can influence how people evaluate an individual’s readiness for another opportunity.

Redeemability, the researchers suggest, is not necessarily fixed at the moment of conviction. It can change.

That finding deserves serious attention in a correctional system that routinely asks individuals to demonstrate personal growth while sometimes providing little opportunity for that growth to influence the length of their incarceration.

The People Left Behind by Mass Incarceration

In August 2025, the Sentencing Project published The Second Look Movement: An Assessment of the Nation’s Sentence Review Laws.

It’s findings provide important context.

In 2024, more than 194,000 people in American prisons were serving life sentences. Nearly two-fifths of those individuals were 55 or older.

These numbers represent an aging population, many of whom entered prison during decades when lengthy sentences and restrictive sentencing policies dramatically expanded incarceration.

Behind those numbers are individuals who have spent much of their adult lives in correctional institutions.

Some have remained engaged in programs, education, religious activities, recovery, and service to others. Some have developed leadership roles within their prison communities. Others have struggled, experienced setbacks, or continued patterns of behavior that raise legitimate concerns about release.

Their experiences are not interchangeable.

But neither should their futures be determined solely by who they were decades earlier without examining who they are today.

I’ve spent years working in correctional recovery settings, including with individuals serving lengthy and indefinite sentences. One thing that experience has reinforced for me is that a person’s sentence tells us very little about the entirety of that person’s life.

Within correctional institutions are people who have accumulated decades of lived experience, developed insight, supported others, and worked toward meaningful personal change. This has often occurred under some of the least ideal of settings.

There are also people whose voices have rarely been heard beyond the razor wire.

For some, the last substantial public account of their lives was presented during a trial or sentencing hearing decades ago.

The person described in those proceedings may be the only person the public remembers.

But time has not stood still.

When Rehabilitation Has No Release Date

Rehabilitation is a central part of the language of modern corrections.

We encourage incarcerated individuals to take responsibility, address substance use, understand trauma, develop emotional regulation, participate in education, and learn healthier ways of relating to others.

We measure progress through treatment participation, institutional conduct, educational achievements, and other indicators of change.

But what happens when that progress has no meaningful opportunity to affect their future?

What happens when an individual completes program after program, mentors others, maintains a record of positive institutional conduct, and continues working toward personal growth-yet remains subject to a sentence that may never be reconsidered?

That contradiction becomes difficult to ignore.

Rehabilitation should have value beyond institutional compliance. Its importance shouldn’t depend entirely on whether an individual is approaching a release date.

For many serving life or extremely lengthy sentences, meaningful change occurs without any assurance that it will result in freedom.

That commitment deserves recognition even when release is not appropriate.

Where a person has served decades, evidence of rehabilitation deserves consideration alongside the seriousness of the original offense, the harm suffered by victims and families, and current public safety concerns.

The question is not whether rehabilitation erases accountability.

It does not.

The question is whether accountability must always require the same punishment, regardless of the passage of time and the person an individual has become.

Parole Eligibility Is Not the Same as a Meaningful Opportunity for Release

This distinction is particularly important in Kentucky.

A sentence carrying the possibility of parole does not guarantee release. Nor should it.

Parole boards must consider the seriousness of the offense, institutional behavior, risk to the public, and other relevant factors.

But when parole is repeatedly denied, or a serve-out decision effectively ends further ordinary parole consideration, the practical consequences can be profound.

An individua who was originally sentenced with the possibility of parole may ultimately face the prospect of dying in prison.

That raises a difficult question.

If the opportunity for parole exists on paper but is permanently closed in practice, what meaningful mechanism remains for recognizing decades of rehabilitation?

Executive clemency is one possible avenue, but it is discretionary and exceptional.

Second-look sentencing offers a different approach.

Rather than depending exclusively on a parole board or executive intervention, a second-look law can authorize a court to reconsider whether a lengthy sentence remains appropriate after a substantial period of incarceration.

Such a review can examine evidence unavailable at the original sentencing-decades of institutional conduct, rehabilitation, maturity, health, community support, and current assessments of public safety.

It can also provide opportunities for victims and surviving family members to be heard.

A judge may determine that continued incarceration remains warranted.

But the decision would be informed by the  person and circumstances that exist today, not exclusively by those that existed decades ago.

What Other States Are Beginning To Recognize

The movement toward second-look sentencing is no longer merely theoretical.

The Sentencing Project’s 2025 report identified sentence review mechanisms across 25 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal system, although these mechanisms vary considerable in scope and eligibility.

Some apply primarily to people sentence as juveniles or young adults. Others address particular sentencing circumstances or allow broader judicial review.

Delaware, for example, expanded opportunities in 2025 for certain individuals who have served at least 25 years to seek sentence modification based on rehabilitation.

These approaches are not identical, and they don’t guarantee release.

They do, however, reflect an important policy development; some jurisdictions are establishing ways to examine lengthy sentences in light of circumstances that could not have been known when the original sentence was imposed.

The American Law Institute has also recommended a judicial second-look process after 15 years of imprisonment.

These developments raise a question for Kentucky.

What would it mean to create a meaningful, transparent opportunity for individuals serving lengthy sentences to present evidence of rehabilitation and ask a court to reconsider whether continued incarceration remains justified?

Such a process could include legal representation, clearly established eligibility requirements, written judicial findings, and careful consideration of public safety.

It could also address people who have already received parole denials or ‘serve-out’ decisions.

Without such provisions, those who have spent the longest periods incarcerated could remain excluded from reforms intended to reconsider extreme sentences.

Karen Brown: One Life Among Many

For me, these questions are not abstract.

Karen Brown has spent over four decades incarcerated in Kentucky.

She was 21 years old at the time of the crime for which she was convicted in 1986. Her sentence provided the possibility of parole after 25 years.

During her incarceration, Karen has pursued extensive education, completed more than 100 programs, earned a master’s degree in Christian Counseling, and developed a record of service and leadership within the prison community.

Her commentaries through Prison Radio offer a perspective rarely heard in public discussions of sentencing: that of a woman who has spent most of her adult life behind the razor wires and continues to reflect on rehabilitation, responsibility, faith, and hope.

Yet after three parole hearings, the Kentucky Parole Board issued a ‘serve-out’ decision in 2021.

The practical consequence is that Karen faces the prospect of spending the remainder of her life incarcerated, despite having originally received a sentence that included the possibility of parole.

Her clemency application now asks Kentucky’s governor to reconsider her circumstances.

But Karen’s story is not the only story.

There are others whose names we don’t know, whose achievements have not been publicized, and whose experiences have never reached an audience beyond the razor wires.

Some have family members and advocates working tirelessly on their behalf. Others have no one.

Some have compelling records of rehabilitation. Others may have significant barriers to release that require careful examination.

The purpose of a second-look process would not be to presume that all are ready to return to society.

It would provide an opportunity to examine the evidence.

Karen’s experience illustrates why such a process matters, but the need for meaningful review extends far beyond her case.

What Would a Meaningful Second Look Look Like in Kentucky?

Kentucky’s sentencing policy recognizes the importance of public safety, accountability, reducing recidivism, and improving outcomes for individuals who are sentenced.

These objectives need not be in conflict.

A second-look process could allow courts to consider whether continued incarceration serves those objectives after an individual ahs spent decades in prison.

The Sentencing Project’s 2025 recommendations identify several features that could make such reviews more meaningful: broad eligibility, retroactive application, access to legal counsel, a right to a hearing, consideration of relevant evidence, victim participation, and clear judicial authority to modify sentences.

Particularly important is the recommendation that courts retain authority to reconsider sentences notwithstanding earlier parole decisions.

That provision speaks directly to the circumstances of individuals who may have demonstrated substantial rehabilitation but have already exhausted their ordinary opportunities for parole consideration.

But they are questions about how to design a fair process-not reasons to assume that meaningful review is possible.

The People We Have Yet to Hear

In my earlier article, When a Prison Becomes the Execution Chamber: Death by Incarceration, I explored the reality of individuals who were never sentenced to execution but may nevertheless spend the remainder of their lives in prison.

The issue of second-look sentencing brings us back to that same difficult terrain.

When a sentence offers no meaningful possibility of reconsideration, even decades of demonstrated rehabilitation may be insufficient to alter its outcome.

For those incarcerated during the expansion of mass incarceration, the passage of time has created a generation of aging individuals whose lives and circumstances may bear little resemblance to those considered at their original sentencing.

Some may continue to pose substantial risks.

Others may have changed in ways that warrant serious reconsideration.

We cannot determine that simply by looking at the date of conviction or the length of the original sentence.

We must be willing to examine the evidence.

And perhaps we must also be willing to listen.

Listen to the people whose lives have unfolded behind the razor wires for decades.

Listen to those who have witnessed rehabilitation firsthand, including correctional professionals, educators, counselors, volunteers, and community members.

And recognize that accountability, public safety, rehabilitation, and human dignity don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

The 2025 research on public support for universal second-look sentencing offers an important insight: many Americans are willing to consider whether people can change and whether that change should matter.

Kentucky has an opportunity to examine what a meaningful second-look framework might look like within its own sentencing system.

Not every person who receives a second-look will be released.

Not every lengthy sentence will be reduced.

But a process that permits careful reconsideration recognizes something fundamental about human beings and justice alike.

The people we sentenced decades ago are not necessarily the same people living with those sentences today.

Their past deserves to be acknowledged. The harm caused must not be forgotten.

But neither should the decades that followed be rendered meaningless.

There are people behind the razor wire whose names we don’t know, whose accomplishments we have never heard about, and whose voices have gone unheard for far too long.

Perhaps the first step toward a more meaningful justice system is simply being willing to look again.

Because a second-look is not a promise of freedom. It’s an opportunity for justice to consider the whole person, and the whole passage of time. What does rehabilitation mean if we are unwilling to recognize the possibility of change?

Research and sources

Smith et al. (2025). Public Support for Universal Second Look Sentencing: A Research Note. Criminology, 63(1), 280-293.

Cohbra & Feldan (2025). The Second Look Movement: An Assessment of the Nation’s Sentence Review Laws. The Sentencing Project.

American Law Institute. Model Penal Code: Sentencing, provisions concerning sentence modification after lengthy imprisonment.

Kentucky Revised Statutes  532.007. Commonwealth’s Sentencing Policy.

Karen Brown’s case and clemency effort: KyFreeKarenBrown.com