Three decades of misguided tough-on-crime policies have created a mammoth U.S. prison system that holds more than 2 million people and costs an estimated $80 billion a year.
But the debate on crime and punishment, driven in part by soaring corrections costs, has shifted in the past two years. Bipartisan policy proposals that seek to reverse some of the Draconian measures of the past include changes that would have been practically unthinkable a decade ago.
Last week, the Justice Department announced that, under revised sentencing guidelines set in motion a year ago, 6,000 low-level drug offenders will soon be leaving federal prisons. A week earlier, Democratic and Republican senators introduced a measure called the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, which would further ease unnecessarily severe penalties that have raised prison costs while doing little for public safety.
The bill would give judges more discretion to exempt nonviolent drug offenders from harsh mandatory minimum sentencing. It would also, as justice and fairness dictate, make retroactive a 2010 law that reduced sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine offenses.
Equally important, the measure would provide sentence-reduction incentives for prisoners who take part in rehabilitation programs, and it would limit solitary confinement for juveniles in federal custody. The bill’s chief sponsors include Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, and Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York.
Public opinion on crime has shifted drastically from the lock-‘em-up attitudes of the 1980s. More people, regardless of political party, are concerned about the exorbitant costs of imprisoning nonviolent, particularly drug, offenders.
Most states could safely reduce their prison populations by at least 20 percent. That would save tens, even hundreds, of millions of dollars a year. This bipartisan plan would move the nation toward a more sensible criminal justice system.