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| A New Development in Prison Reform |
| By colorlines.com- Carla Murphy |
| Published: 01/30/2014 |
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There’s not much that Tea Party Republicans and liberal Democrats agree on these days. Surprisingly, one of them happens to be scaling back mass incarceration, the subject of a live-streamed meeting today of the senate judiciary committee. The motives vary among and between key legislative leaders as ideologically disparate as Republican senators Mike Lee (Utah) and Rand Paul (Ken.) and Democrats Patrick Leahy (Vt.) and Dick Durbin (Ill.). But whether motivated by concern for civil liberties, unsustainable state and federal budgets, or a New Testament-inclination for giving second chances, one fact trumps all differences: The United States houses by far the largest incarcerated population in the world at 2.2 million people as of year-end 2011. That smudge, as well as unsubtle championing of sentencing reform by attorney general Eric Holder, has galvanized a relatively quiet bipartisan effort over the past five years. Advocates say Congress is taking on mass incarceration one reform at a time. The latest are tucked into the 1,582-page FY2014 omnibus spending bill and, other reforms are coming down the pike. Below, a guide to these new developments. What stands out in the 2014 omnibus spending bill? Advocates are excited about the creation of the $1 million Charles Colson Task Force, an independent, nine-member panel of experts tasked with issuing recommendations on federal prison reform. A similar idea for a bipartisan commission, at least on Capitol Hill, dates back to 2009. And although the scope of this current incarnation is federal prisons, the bill’s somewhat broad remit suggests that the commission could potentially issue the first comprehensive report since 1965 on criminal justice in America. “The Bureau of Prisons [now] sucks up 25 percent of the Department of Justice’s budget,” Molly Gill, government affairs counsel at Washington, DC-based Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), says. “It means more is being spent on prisons and less on prosecution, cops, victim services or rehabilitation—all things that are important for keeping public safety high.” How will Colson treat nonviolent offenders? Nonviolent offenders make up more than 90 percent of the roughly 215,000-member federal prison population at a cost of $20,000 to $30,000 per inmate. Forty percent are in for drugs and 30 percent for immigration-related offenses. Gill says that the Colson task force will figure out fairer sentences—like, not locking people up for a decade because of a period of drug addiction. The feds are taking the lead from states like Georgia and South Carolina, she says, “who were way ahead in looking at sentencing reform and setting up commissions. Read More. |
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