Get Active Subscribe Support Us

U.S.  TO RELEASE 6,000 INMATES UNDER NEW SENTENCING GUIDELINES

Nonviolent Drug Crimes

Mass Release May Be One of Largest in U.S.  History

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department is preparing to release roughly 6,000 inmates from federal prison as part of an effort to ease overcrowding and roll back the harsh penalties given to nonviolent drug dealers in the 1980s and 1990s, according to federal law-enforcement officials.

The release, scheduled to occur from Oct.  30 to Nov.  2, will be one of the largest one-time discharges of inmates from federal prisons in American history, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing matters that had not been publicly announced by the Justice Department.

The Bureau of Prisons is arranging for many of the inmates to initially move into halfway houses, one official said.

In April, the U.S.  Sentencing Commission created guidelines that reduced the penalties for many nonviolent drug crimes and made some of those changes retroactive.  Officials said at the time that the move applied to at least 50,000 federal inmates sentenced under the previous guidelines.

The new guidelines were issued amid increasing support for an overhaul of sentencing.  The United States has a quarter of the world's prison population, and Republicans and Democrats alike agree that prison spending, which accounts for a third of the Justice Department's budget, needs to be reduced.  News of the prison release was first reported by The Washington Post.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are considering other ways to scale back the numbers of people who are facing lengthy stays in federal prison because of nonviolent drug crimes.

A bipartisan group of powerful senators last week proposed a broad overhaul of the system for imposing mandatory minimum sentences, urged on by President Obama and activist groups that ranged from the far right to the far left.

The changes would be retroactive if the legislation is enacted, and lawmakers estimated that up to 6,500 prisoners - many of them charged with offenses related to crack cocaine - could qualify for resentencing under the changes.

In the coming year, an additional 8,550 prisoners would be eligible for release, according to Sentencing Commission spokesman Matt Osterrieder, though he added that not all of them would be approved.

When the mass release was first proposed, some federal prosecutors and even then Attorney General Eric Holder preferred a much narrower approach.

Under a compromise, the sentencing commission agreed to delay the releases until late this year, permitting a more thorough vetting of each case.  Congress, where sentencing reform has had bipartisan support, allowed the changes to go into effect.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department was solidly behind the releases.

"The Department of Justice strongly supports sentencing reform for low-level, nonviolent drug offenders," Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said.  "The Sentencing Commission's actions - which create modest reductions for drug offenders - is a step toward these necessary reforms."

But officials said the releases are not limited to nonviolent offenders, though each release is individually approved by a federal judge, who must make a determination that the person is not a threat to public safety.  So far, Osterrieder said, judges have approved about 75 percent of requests for release.

Studies of previous but smaller mass releases in 2007, when sentences were adjusted for crack cocaine, showed that the recidivism rate for those released early was about the same as those released at the completion of their sentences, about 40 percent, Osterrieder said.

The Obama administration and a bipartisan coalition in Congress have been working on reforms to lower the U.S.  incarceration rate, one of the highest in the world.

But Obama's 89 clemencies to date constitute a small fraction of the roughly 8,000 clemency petitions pending from prisoners.  His efforts have, so far, fallen short of expectations set last April, when the Justice Department announced the most ambitious federal clemency program in 40 years and invited lawyers across the country to help tens of thousands of federal drug offenders apply.

Justice Department spokeswoman Emily Pierce said that roughly one-third of those released will be deported because they are not U.S.  citizens.  Most of the others will be sent to halfway houses or supervised home-release, officials said.

Washington state does not have a federal prison; the nearest one is in Sheridan, Ore.