Report: 6,000 prisoners to go free amid rising support for prison reform
US News
Report: 6,000 prisoners to go free amid rising support for prison reform
The U.S. Justice Department is set to release about 6,000 prisoners early in the largest one-time release of federal inmates, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. The release, scheduled for between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2, is an effort to reduce overcrowding and provide relief to drug offenders who received harsh sentences over the past three decades, the newspaper said. The inmates will be set free by the department’s Bureau of Prisons. Most will go to halfway houses and home confinement before being put on supervised release, the Post said.
Congress still needs to pass comprehensive criminal justice reform.
Michael Collins, police manager for The Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group
There are 206,000 inmates in federal prisons, up from about 25,000 in 1980, according to the Bureau of Prisons website. 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. The drumbeat for sentencing reform has come as U.S. crime rates have drastically declined over the past two decades. U.S. senators last week proposed a plan to reform criminal justice, aiming to scrap sentencing laws that lead to overcrowding.
