Justice Department Will Release 6000 Nonviolent Drug Convicts Late This Month

The US Justice Department is set to spring 6,000 federal inmates from prison before their sentences are complete, the Washington Post reports, in the largest one-time release of inmates in USA history.

The inmates will be freed between October 30 and November 2, according to the Washington Post, which said the move was an attempt to reduce overcrowding and support drug offenders who had received stiff sentences.

They became eligible for release after going through an appeals process following the recent restructuring of drug sentences by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

The prisoners have served an average of nine years and were due to be released in about 18 months, the official said.

The releases are part of a shift in the nation’s approach to criminal justice and drug sentencing.

An additional 8,550 prisoners will be eligible for release in the next year, according to the Sentencing Commission. The U.S. Sentencing Commission voted past year to retroactively apply substantially lower recommended sentences for those convicted of drug-related felonies. Holder endorsed the new guidelines last summer.

“Far too many people have lost years of their lives to draconian sentencing laws born of the failed drug war,”Jesselyn McCurdy, Senior Legislative Counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement”. There were a total of 1.56 million inmates in federal and state prisons at the end of 2014, according to Department of Justice figures.

Prisoners must petition the judge for an early prison release and it will be up to that judge if their sentence is cut short. The commission sets federal sentencing guidelines. Many were already in half-way houses.

Federal prison costs represent about one-third of the Justice Department’s $27 billion budget.

Once inmates are released, she said, probation officers “are working hard to ensure that returning offenders are adequately supervised and monitored”.