Larry Hoover, the co-founder of the Gangster Disciples, had his sentence commuted by former President Donald Trump. Hoover, who has spent the past 51 years in prison, is currently serving five life sentences, plus an additional 30 years for crimes including federal drug conspiracy, extortion, and money laundering. At 74 years old, Hoover’s decades-long imprisonment has focused a deserved spotlight on justice and rehabilitation within the American penal system.
For over 20 years, Hoover was cut off from nearly all contact with the outside world. His solitary confinement consisted of 23 hours a day in a concrete cell. This little area, no bigger than a parking space, inside the ADX Florence prison in Fremont County, Colorado. In 1973, Hoover was convicted for ordering the execution of a rival local drug dealer. He was hit with a draconian sentence of 150-200 years. In 1997, he was convicted of continuing a criminal enterprise and was sentenced to six additional life sentences.
Court documents depicted the Gangster Disciples as “big and menacing.” They described the gang’s role in distributing thousands of kilos of cocaine, heroin and other drugs across Chicago. He’s since found faith, turned his life around and left his past ways behind. He’s fought aggressively for his own sentence reductions under the First Step Act, a reform measure approved during the Trump administration.
In recent years, public momentum for Hoover’s release has increased. In 2021, Kanye West and Drake held the “Free Larry Hoover Benefit Concert.” This collective cultural reimagination was on display in the immense, international and transcendent cultural impact of Larry Hoover’s case. This concert helped shine a huge spotlight on issues of mass incarceration and the need for rehabilitation.
In a court appearance in 2024, Hoover said he wanted the opportunity to have a second chance at life outside prison walls. He stated, “I’m a completely different person than the man who went to prison in 1997.” Yet the extent of his remarks speaks to a profound personal change and acceptance of responsibility for the harm he caused.
The decision to commute Hoover’s sentence comes as part of a broader discussion on criminal justice reform in the United States. Advocates have similarly maintained that people like Hoover should be given a second chance, particularly after their expression of remorse and evidence of personal growth.