Approximately 2.3 million people are now being held behind bars in the country, giving the United States the ignoble distinction of incarcerating more people than any other country in the world, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. President Obama recently spoke at a prison strongly advocating sentencing reforms.
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If passed into law, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act will reduce the mandatory life without parole sentence for a third drug or violent offence and the mandatory minimums on drug and gun possession.
Lee said that case is why his priority when he arrived in the Senate was the reduction of minimum mandatory sentencing laws. This part of the proposal can be applied retroactively.
The circumstances that prompt these minimum sentences would also be changed. Under this new Senate bill, that minimum would shrink to 25 years. “I don’t know, I honestly don’t know”, Durbin said. “I thank Chairman Grassley for leading the long, thorough and collaborative process, respecting a wide range of views, that ultimately produced this bill, and I’m proud to support it”, Whitehouse said.
Grassley appears to have mostly stood firm. The top Democrat on the committee, Sen. “They want to make sure to maintain a high rate of plea deals”.
“It looks like a relatively small mouse to come out of such a big mountain, but it’s something”, said Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy. Since then, prison populations in the USA have skyrocketed.
With federal prison populations skyrocketing and about half of the nation’s federal inmates serving time for drug offenses, senators said the proposal would better rehabilitate prisoners, reduce crime and save taxpayer dollars. “A few states have already adopted reforms, but there’s a lot more that needs to be done”. “In the federal system, nonviolent drug offenders actually matter”.
The compromise, however, may have been required to get something done. Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy, the former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has in the past steadfastly voted against bills that created any new mandatory minimums, but an aide said he supports the new legislation as well. Political forces on the right and left from liberal House members to the Koch Brothers are pushing for change.
The compromise is also a outcome of the sustained rhetoric around mass incarceration.
The legislation quickly drew praise from advocacy groups on both sides of the aisle, who urged its passage in the Senate and adoption in the House. Police found another gun in a bag in his apartment.
Lee, though, is optimistic, pointing to the large amount of bipartisan support and the crucial pickup of Grassley.
Several interest groups rallied around the new Senate measure. Judges would be able to use it for offenders who have committed more than one minor offense (or, in certain cases, offenders who’d served a longer term for one previous crime that still wasn’t “serious”). John Cornyn of Texas also helped craft the bipartisan bill.
Democratic Senator Cory Booker demonstrated his passion about the reform bill, saying if it were senatorial protocol, he would hug all the senators who were standing behind him.
Mandatory minimum sentencing laws, most of which were enacted during the tough-on-crime period of the 1980s, require binding prison terms of a particular length and prevent judges from using their discretion to apply punishment. But he said the proposal is nonetheless a “pretty significant demonstration” of Grassley’s commitment to reform. “Today gives me hope”.
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Lee related a story, one he often tells, about his time as assistant US attorney, where he witnessed a man in his mid-20s get sentenced to 55 years in prison under inflexible mandatory-minimum guidelines for selling marijuana three times to an undercover officer. What Can America Learn from German’s Prison System? 5.
