“I feel like I’m spending the second half of my life making up for the first half,” Earley told more than 120 people gathered Tuesday at Eastern Mennonite Seminary for a presentation on mass incarceration.

Earley, a Republican, was in the state Senate from 1988 to 1997, served as attorney general from 1998 to 2001 and is now co-chairman of Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s Commission on Parole Review.

He is also is a member of Right on Crime, a national conservative organization dedicated to criminal justice reform. The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at 91����Ƶ invited Earley to speak.

Growing concern

Incarceration rates became a contentious issue last year as Harrisonburg and Rockingham County officials sought ways to alleviate overcrowding at the Rockingham County Jail.

City Council and the Board of Supervisors decided to buy into the Middle River Regional Jail Authority in a deal that took effect in July.

Opponents of the deal said the city and county should invest in treatment for nonviolent offenders and other reforms, not buy more jail space. Earley said measures should be taken to reduce incarceration rates.

He said he is in favor of reinstating parole in Virginia, eliminating mandatory minimums sentences, keeping inmates close to their families so they have a support system and allowing community-based groups to help inmates to re-enter society.

“The paradigm of most prisons does nothing to help people come back to society,” Earley said. “It almost sets you up to fail.”

He also said criminalizing drug addiction is not helping anyone, and the state needs to invest in helping addicts instead of imprisoning them.

Earley also said judges should be required to visit a prison once a year to “see where they are sending people.”

‘Tough on crime’ measures were successful

As attorney general and a state senator, Earley supported many “tough on crime” measures — such as eliminating parole in 1995, and lowering the age juveniles can be tried as adults from 16 to 14 in 1994 — that contributed to increased incarceration rates in Virginia.

“We were scarily successful at putting a lot of people in jail,” Earley said.

According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics study, in 2013, Virginia incarcerated 36,982 people in prison as opposed to 24,822 in 1994, a 49 percent increase. According to the National Institute of Corrections, Virginia’s prison population per 100,000 people was 446 in 2013, or 13 percent higher than the national average, despite the commonwealth’s relatively low crime rate.

As a state senator and later as attorney general, Earley said he didn’t think much about prisoners. That changed when he started visiting prisons to help inmates re-enter society.

“I viewed prisoners as something other,” Earley said. “When I went into prisons, I saw them as human beings.”

The public discussion after Earley’s presentation mentioned the “abuse and lose” rule that he advocated for.

The law, instituted in 2001, revoked driver’s licenses of people who abused drugs even if their conviction had nothing to do with driving.

“The thought was …  we’ll send a message,” Earley said. “Guess what? People who use drugs don’t function well on getting messages.”

This article was reprinted from the Oct. 21, 2015 Daily News-Record.

Now Earley is speaking out about mass incarceration and the death penalty. He currently serves as co-chair of and is immediate past president of the nationwide ministry, , founded by Charles Colson. He practices law with Earley Legal Group in Leesburg.

Earley will speak Tuesday, Oct. 20 at 7 p.m. in Martin Chapel at 91����Ƶ (91����Ƶ) on “Why America Incarcerates So Many People and What We Can Do 91����Ƶ It.”

Broad coalition endorsing visit

His visit is sponsored by a diverse coalition of more than 20 area organizations, including 91����Ƶ’s (CJP).

Earley’s visit comes months after the Harrisonburg Police Department, aided by CJP-trained practitioners from 91����Ƶ, James Madison University and the local Fairfield Center, announced an ambitious restorative justice program aimed at reducing local incarceration rates and reforming the local criminal justice system.

“In light of all of the recent conversation going on in our community over the issue of jail expansion, some of us saw Mark Earley as an ideal person to speak to the urgent need for criminal justice reform, given his conservative credentials and his years of experience in the field,” said , Mennonite pastor, counselor and criminal justice advocate. “The more than 20 local agencies and organizations officially endorsing the event, ranging from the Harrisonburg Police Department to James Madison University’s Department of Justice Studies, reflects some of the broad interest in this topic.”

Yoder is among the leaders of a local chapter of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an interfaith peace organization, as well as of a local working group focused on local justice issues known as Building Better Communities.

Additional organizations endorsing Earley’s visit include the Valley Family Forum, Virginia Organizing, Our Community Place, On the Road Collaborative, NAACP Harrisonburg chapter, Northeast Neighborhood Association, NewBridges Immigrant Resource Center, the Martin Luther King Way Coalition, Mahatma Ghandhi Center for Global Nonviolence, The Institute for Reform and Solutions, Immanuel Mennonite Church, The Harriet Tubman Cultural Center, Harrisonburg/Rockingham/Page Reentry Council, Harrisonburg/Rockingham Interfaith Association, Harrisonburg City School Board, Harrisonburg Democratic Committee, Gemeinschaft Home, The Fairfield Center and Community Mennonite Church.

Relationships with incarcerated were influential

Earley, an attorney, practiced law for 15 years in Norfolk, Virginia, as a criminal defense attorney and then served in the Virginia State Senate from 1988-1998. During that time, Virginia executed 36 people. In 1998, he was elected Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia, resigning in 2001 to run an unsuccessful campaign for governor. For all of these years, Earley says he supported the death penalty, but had increasing doubts about its morality.

He also delved deeply into the lives and culture of the incarcerated as part of a , and visited every juvenile detention center in Virginia – a that he recounts in an interview in The American Conservative.

After losing the governor’s election to Mark Warner, Earley served the next eight years until 2011 as president of Prison Fellowship USA. According to its website, Prison Fellowship helps to make prisons “more rehabilitative places, advocates for a restorative criminal justice system; and supports church and service providers to support former prisoners, their families and communities.”

Earley is now a vocal opponent of the death penalty, often joining bipartisan efforts such as The Constitution Project to advocate for reform. An essay published in the April 2015 issue of the University of Richmond Law Review summarizes his change of view: titled “,” the essay reflects on the recent exoneration of 14-year-old George Stinney, the youngest person executed in the United States. In 1944, the teenager was convicted of killing two white girls after a two-hour trial and a 10-minute jury deliberation riddled with impropriety.

“If you believe that the government always ‘gets it right,’ never makes serious mistakes, and is never tainted with corruption, then you can be comfortable supporting the death penalty. I no longer have such faith in the government and therefore, cannot and do not support the death penalty,” Earley writes at the beginning of his essay.

Editor’s note: Valley Family Forum is no longer providing an endorsement of this event. [Oct. 16, 2015]