Ms. Bowser’s legislation, which employs a punishment-only approach to promoting public safety, includes a provision that would amend the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act (IRAA) to direct the court to consider an individual’s original offense when determining whether release is in order. However, the IRAA was adopted because it is now widely recognized that the human brain is still developing under the age of 25 and that people tend to age out of criminal behavior after this threshold. Thus, D.C. and many other humane governments around the world have allowed such individuals to petition a judge for release after 15 years of incarceration, based on their demonstrated rehabilitation.
