The U.S. Department of Justice plans to lessen sentences for nonviolent drug offenders and release thousands of federal inmates to ease overcrowding.
The decision is an important step in the right direction but it should be done with plans to reduce recidivism and careful considerations to public safety.
The Justice Department last week announced that it is set to release about 6,000 inmates early from prison in an effort to reduce overcrowding and provide relief to drug offenders who received harsh sentences over the last three decades.
The department’s Bureau of Prisons will set free the inmates from federal prisons between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2.
Officials said about one-third of the inmates will go to halfway houses and home confinement before being put on supervised release. About one-third of those released are foreign citizens who will be quickly deported.
The federal move follows action by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency that sets sentencing policies for federal crimes, that reduced the potential punishment for future drug offenders last year and then made that change retroactive.
The commission’s action is separate from a decision by President Barack Obama to grant clemency to certain nonviolent drug offenders, which has resulted in the early release of 89 inmates.
The much needed sentencing reform is part of an increasingly bipartisan effort to reduce the length of mandatory-minimum drug sentences that were part of the tough-on-crime laws passed during the war on drugs in the 1980s and 1990s.
The sentencing reforms are long overdue.
Our prisons are now overcrowded with many low-level nonviolent drug offenders who have no connection to gangs or large-scale drug organizations. Mass incarceration is costly to state budgets and to society.
However, the early release of these prisoners should be done with careful planning. Former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. had rightly proposed more restrictive criteria that would exclude people who had used weapons or had significant criminal histories. Unfortunately, the Sentencing Commission decided to leave the decisions to individual judges. The early–release inmates should also be channeled into effective drug treatment and training programs, and jobs to reduce recidivism.
The early release must include opportunities for these returning citizens to succeed in society.
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