STATEMENT FROM SCOTT ROBERTS, INTERIM CHIEF OF CAMPAIGNS, COLOR OF CHANGE ON THE PENNSYLVANIA SENATE PASSAGE OF SB913

“Color Of Change is dismayed to learn that Senate Bill 913 was voted out of the Pennsylvania Senate last week in a 46-4 floor vote. We commend the senators who voted against the bill, in particular Senator Vincent Hughes, Senator Katie Muth, and Senator Nikil Saval, for listening to the voices of formerly incarcerated and Black-led organizations that, for months, have challenged claims that Black and brown Pennsylvanians will benefit from the bill despite its many carve outs. 

While we agree that the labyrinth-like system of probation in Pennsylvania is in desperate need of reform, SB 913 has a number of concerning provisions including expanding the authority to detain people for new violations, codifying the indefinite detention of people with mental illness, and introducing explicit prohibitions against terminating probation, which threaten to undermine current judicial authority to terminate probation for any reason, at any time, for any offense.

It is dangerous for the Senate to frame this bill as one that will begin to address racial disparities when, in fact, we know the bill will do the opposite – by creating new legal reach for judges, prosecutors, probation officers, and the police to utilize the notion of “public safety” as a mechanism to extend probation, and with it, detention.  

The Pennsylvania probation system is certainly in crisis, but this is not a time for ill-conceived triage that will do more harm than good. More than 50 percent of people sent to state prison each year are there for supervision violations and many of the people held in our jails pretrial are incarcerated on probation and parole detainers.  Any probation bill should be driven by the ultimate goal of decarceration and ending the consistent net-widening of systems of mass supervision. A genuine bill would start with creating probation caps, ending the use of probation detainers, and eliminating the imposition of incarceration for technical violations. SB913 is not that. We strongly urge the House to oppose this bill wholeheartedly.”

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