After decades of tough sentencing for drug offenses, almost 6,000 inmates will be released from federal prisons between 30 October and 2 November.
Advertisement
About a third of those released will be foreign citizens who then will be deported, The Washington Post reported Tuesday in an article that attracted public attention to the large number of pending releases.
With this new mechanism, two years will be taken of eligible prisoners’ imposed sentences. To cut the sentence of someone who never should have been in prison from 10 years to eight is an improvement, but it’s not exactly justice. “Most of them will go to halfway houses, and home confinement before being put on supervised release.”
They also pointed to a study previous year that found that the recidivism rate for offenders who were released early after changes in crack-cocaine sentencing guidelines in 2007 was not significantly different from offenders who completed their sentences. The move is an attempt to reduce overcrowding and support drug offenders who received stiff sentences.
A wider political push, led by President Obama and several activist organizations, is also in the works to reign in the current system for imposing mandatory minimum sentences. Along with examining the inmates’ behavior in prison, the judges look at whether they are likely to act out violently if they are released. Prior to their release, prisoners will still have served substantial sentences.
The new guidelines reflect a broader national effort to roll back harsh punishment for drug offenders.
What are your thoughts about the early release of federal prisoners convicted of low-level drug offenses?
‘Congress still needs to pass comprehensive criminal justice reform, ‘ Michael Collins, the group’s policy manager, said in a statement. Nearly half the 205,000 in US federal prisons are serving sentences for drug crimes.
“Obviously the time is now upon us, but it’s not like yesterday [President Barack] Obama announced 6,000 prisoners would get out of jail”, he says.
“It’s a matter of basic fairness to make sure people who were sentenced before a new law or policy are treated equally”, said Nazgol Ghandnoosh, a research analyst with The Sentencing Project, which advocated for the guidelines to be applied retroactively.
With a November. 1 deadline from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the release will be the first batch and largest single release of federal convicts in the country’s history. Bipartisan legislation aimed at reducing spending on federal prisons and to give judges greater sentencing discretion and ease penalties for nonviolent criminals has been proposed. But federal courts must find those inmates don’t pose a safety risk before approving their early release.
Certainly, a year ago, when the Sentencing Commission made this decision to allow these prisoners to be released, Senator Chuck Grassley, who heads up the Senate Judiciary Committee, expressed concern that murderers and robbers would be let back out onto the streets.
Advertisement
The war on drugs, as declared by President Richard Nixon in June of 1971, began an era of harsher sentencing for nonviolent drug offenders.
