Department of Justice to Release 6000 Prisoners to Curb Overcrowding

The changes are part of a national bipartisan effort to rethink decades-long sentences for drug offenders, who make up roughly half of the federal prison population.

The Washington Post however notes law enforcement officials around the country are concerned the released prisoners may struggle to get jobs, and return to crime. Though both were sentenced in 1990, the judge declared them to be continuing threats and chastised prosecutors for appearing to dismiss the pair’s involvement in violent and calculating crime. Many were already in half-way houses.

It also notes the 206,000 or so prisoners in state (not federal) facilities because of drug convictions have no such luck; the decision has no bearing on state sentencing guidelines.

About 6,000 inmates are due to be freed from custody in the coming month, the result of changes made previous year to guidelines that provide judges with recommended sentences for specific crimes.

The president has said that overly harsh sentences are responsible for the doubling of the USA prison population in the last 20 years. The United States has 2.2 million people behind bars as of 2015, making us the most incarcerated nation in the world.

“This thing they are talking about is called ‘Drugs Minus Two, ‘” Tim Tyler, who’s doing life for a nonviolent LSD conspiracy, explains. The change not only reduces overlong sentences, but helps with prison overcrowding and its attendant costs. The large size of this release is the result of delaying inmate releases to give the Justice Department time to prepare for the increased need for prisoner monitoring and reentry services.

I recently watched a VICE News special report titled “Fixing the System”, which took a look at mass incarceration in the USA and included an exclusive interview with President Obama, the first sitting Commander in Chief to visit a federal prison. Prisons consume one-third of the Justice Department’s $27 billion annual budget.

Almost 75 percent of people who end up in federal prison for drug offenses are either black or Hispanic.

Those non-citizens will be released between October 30th and November 2nd.

In a recent post, I argued that capital punishment represents the “thin” or narrow conception of justice upon which our criminal justice system is based.

According to Los Angeles Times, Sentencing Commission spokesman Matt Osterriender said that an extra 8,550 convicts will be eligible for the same release in 2016, although not all cases may be approved.

Numerous stiff, drug-related mandatory sentences were passed during the 1980s and 90s.