House bill would cut prison time for a few offenders

Republican House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Democrat John Conyers announced the criminal justice reform bill Thursday that cuts many mandatory minimums, including for low-level drug offenders.

A bipartisan group in the House of Representatives has unveiled sentencing reform legislation as a companion to a bill proposed in the Senate one week ago.

Under both bills, the mandatory life sentence under the “three strikes” rule would be reduced to 25 years.

“The House bill also adds a troubling sentencing enhancement for fentanyl-laced heroin, and restricts a few of the retroactive portions that the Senate bill included”, according to a press release from Drug Policy Alliance. Rep. Robert Goodlatte, R-Va., the chairman of the panel, said he hopes to move the legislation soon and believes it has “a tremendous amount of interest” among other members of the House. The USA criminal justice system has been the subject of growing discussion and criticism, particularly over lengthy prison sentences for nonviolent offenders. The legislation would apply those sentencing reductions retroactively, except for offenders who have prior serious violent felony convictions that resulted in a prison sentence of greater than 13 months. “We want to make sure that sentences are fair and just, but we also want to make sure that, for example, we’re not releasing violent criminals back onto our streets”, Goodlatte said. It is cosponsored by important Judiciary Committee members such as Raul Labrador (R-ID), Judy Chu (D-CA), and Mike Bishop (R-MI).

“We are also continuing our work on additional bills that address other aspects of our criminal justice system, including over-criminalization, prison and reentry reform, including youth and juvenile justice issues, improved criminal procedures and policing strategies, and civil asset forfeiture reform and we expect to roll out more bills addressing these topics over the coming weeks”, Goodlatte and Conyers said Wednesday in a joint statement. The Sentencing Reform Act – takes a similar approach to the Senate’s Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, announced last week, although this bill contains new problematic provisions.

The legislation comes as about 6,000 federal inmates serving sentences for drug crimes are set for early release next month under a cost-cutting measure meant to reduce the nation’s prison population.

In July, Obama became the first president to visit a federal prison while in office. He praised the Senate bill after it was introduced and challenged Congress to “put a meaningful criminal justice reform bill on my desk before the end of this year”.

The bill clarifies that judges may apply enhanced mandatory minimum sentences for using a firearm in a crime involving drugs or violence only in cases involving recidivist offenders previously convicted for such an offense. Today, it is more than 200,000.