Virginia Democrats are proposing, for a third time, legislation to turn criminal punishment into a license to reoffend.

Sentencing criminals requires consideration of a few things: danger to society and our notions of justice, but also fairness across defendants. To try and balance these ideas, our criminal justice system has ultimately developed a sentencing formula (disappointing every student who went to law school to avoid math).

In Virginia, and in the federal system, criminal sentencing guidelines instruct prosecutors to assign numbers to a defendant’s criminal history, and exacerbating and mitigating facts of the crime. This formula yields a sentence range. In Virginia, the range is done in years, but in the federal system, it’s done in months. The “correct” sentence, then, is more science than art.

But in Virginia, some prison groups believe that, despite the guidelines, prison sentences greater than 15 years should be re-evaluated. House Bill 834, introduced by Del. Rae Cousins, D-Richmond, proposes that some prisoners serving these long sentences have their sentences reduced by a new judge.