ACLU of Illinois Criminal Justice Policy Attorney Benjamin Ruddell was quoted on a segment of the Morning Shift on WBEZ during a discussion about releasing low-level offenders from prison as a way to reduce overincarceration rates. Ruddell states that in order to effectively reduce the prison population, Illinois would need to consider ways to reduce sentences for more serious offenders:
Low-level drug offenders, while they constitute a high percentage of the admissions to DOC, they don't spend a lot of time there. The biggest savings and the biggest decarceration impact where we can safely reduce the amount of incarceration are in the people serving longer sentences. What we know is that a long sentence often doesn't need to be as long as it is in order to provide punishment, incapacitation and the other things that we're trying to achieve by sentencing people to prison.
You can listen to the segment here.
