We All Pay: Mississippi’s Harmful Habitual Laws
Mississippi Surpasses Oklahoma as Second-Highest Imprisoning State
Mississippi has been steadily climbing back up the top imprisoning states list and has now moved from third to second highest imprisoning state in the nation. The state’s failure in recent years to pass any meaningful sentencing and parole reforms to target extreme sentences bucks the trend in other top imprisoning states where impactful criminal justice reforms are successfully and safely driving prison populations down.
Mississippi has an incarceration crisis, driven in large part by its use of habitual sentences.
Long prison sentences have become the norm in Mississippi. First-time drug possession can land you in prison for 20 years. Stealing tools from a garage can result in 25 years behind bars. On top of these already extreme sentences, people can have extra years, decades, or even life imprisonment added to their sentences if they have ever been convicted of crimes in the past because of the state’s habitual laws.
Learn how these extreme penalties keep families apart and hold the state back.
Mississippi needs
criminal justice reform now.
Mississippi voters across the political spectrum support bold criminal justice reforms. In fact, four out of five registered voters believe it is important to reduce the number of people who are incarcerated, and only three percent want to spend additional tax dollars on jails and prisons.
