Mass-incarceration has done irreparable harm to California’s population. On the rollercoaster of hope and despair, The Second Look Movement delivered incarcerated persons a measure of optimism by lobbying for resentencing.
Such lobbying has paid off for many persons incarcerated by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, has periodically reviewed Second Look laws and has done so again with an updated “The Second Look Movement: An Assessment of the Nation’s Sentence Review Laws.” The San Quentin News originally reported on resentencing in the January issue, an article that sparked much discussion, especially among veterans.
“This report presents the evolution of the second look movement,” said the report, adding, “Legislators and the courts are looking to judicial review as a more effective means to reconsider an incarcerated person’s sentence in order to assess their fitness to reenter society.”
In California, resentencing began in 2018 for military veterans. Qualifying incarcerated veterans “may” petition for a recall of sentence and request resentencing if they “‘may be suffering’ from sexual trauma, traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, or mental health problems as a result of the defendant’s military service,’ if not previously considered at the time of sentencing,” said the report.
An endnote called special attention to People v. Coleman: “The structure of the statute makes it clear why it uses ‘may’ rather than ‘does.’ If, after a hearing, the trial court finds that the petitioner may be suffering from a qualifying condition as a result of his or her military service, it ‘may, in its discretion, resentence the person following a resentencing hearing.’ It does not necessarily have to resentence the petitioner. And if it does, it need only consider the fact that the petitioner may be suffering from a qualifying condition as a result of his or her military service as one mitigating factor, along with all of the other mitigating and aggravating factors in the case. The People are free to challenge the credibility of the petitioner’s claim. The statute does not require the petitioner to allege that the qualifying condition actually contributed to the commission of the crime.”
The report added that the statute applied retroactively, not only to veterans convicted at trial, but also to veterans who had entered plea agreements, but with the exception that “only those serving determinate sentences (a set amount of time to serve) are eligible to seek relief.”
The provision excluded anyone convicted of a serious or violent felony punishable by life imprisonment or death. “Those who are ineligible to seek relief include those who are required to register as sex offenders,” said the report. The law further excluded “anyone convicted of any homicide offense, including attempted homicide and solicitation to commit murder; assault with a machine gun on a peace officer or firefighter; possession of a weapon of mass destruction; or any serious or violent felony punishable by life imprisonment or death.”
For incarcerated persons other than veterans, Cal. Penal Code § 1172.1 allowed district attorneys and the Secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to file a petition at any time to recommend a sentence reduction in corrections and judge-initiated resentencing, according to the report.
Since January 1, 2024, this law expanded permission to judges to initiate resentencing proceedings if laws changed, which applied to many cases. An endnote said, “Some of the most notable examples of changes in the law that would warrant sentence reconsideration are: 2) the change in the felony murder statute (Cal. Penal Code § 1172.6); removal of non-serious felonies from the three strikes law (Cal. Penal Code § 1170.126); and felonies that are now classified as misdemeanors (Cal. Penal Code § 1170.18).”
The most promising part of a recall initiated by a district attorney or a corrections official lay in the “presumption favoring recall and resentencing.” According to Cal. Penal Code § 1172.1(b)(2), only a court finding that “the individual currently poses an unreasonable risk of danger to public safety as defined by statute” could overcome that presumption, said the report.
Cal. Penal Code § 1172.1(a)(5)) allowed the court to take into account factors such as “age, time served, diminished physical condition, defendant’s risk for future violence, and evidence that the circumstances have changed so that continued incarceration is ‘no longer in the interest of justice.’” Psychological, physical, or childhood trauma, abuse, neglect, intimate partner violence, human trafficking, and “whether the person was under the age of 26 at the time of the offense” also figure into consideration.
Among the other changes, the report said, “the court previously could, but is now required, to consider post-conviction factors, such as age, disciplinary record, record of rehabilitation, physical condition, etc.” Courts could reconsider any felony offenses at any time.
Also in 2018, California enacted AB 2942, the first prosecutor-initiated resentencing law in the nation, allowing prosecutors to petition courts for reductions of sentences for felony convictions.
In passing PIR, the California Legislature declared that the purpose of sentencing is “public safety achieved through punishment, rehabilitation, and restorative justice,” said the report.
As of June 2025, over 500 incarcerated persons had their sentences reduced by means of PIR in California, said the report. Data came from For the People, a nonprofit that called prosecutor-initiated resentencing a “powerful tool to help repair the damage of the disproportionate incarceration of Black and Brown people.”