We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
GREATEST GOOD FOR THE GREATEST NUMBER?
Federal inmates understandably focus most on changes in the law that would retroactively reduce their sentences. For that reason, a lot of people are not happy that President Donald Trump has turned the debate from sentencing reform to prison reform, which is changing reentry and rehabilitation programs.
A U.S. Sentencing Commission letter to the Congressional Budget Office – which is responsible for assessing the impact of proposed bills – was posted last week on the USSC website. The letter addresses the impact of S. 1917, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2017, on current sentences and the size of the BOP inmate population.
Surprisingly, the USSC analysis finds the prison reform provisions of SRCA could impact ten times as many federal prisoners as would the sentencing reform provisions. The analysis finds that about 7,000 inmates could benefit from the retroactive sentencing provisions of Title I of the SRCA, but over 75,000 federal prisoners could be eligible for the corrections credits – increased earned good time for completion of education programs – offered by Title II of the bill.
In his Sentencing Law and Policy blog last week, Ohio State University law professor Doug Berman said, “I sincerely hope… criminal justice reform advocates will appreciate that a huge number of… federal prisoners could and would benefit from enacting just the corrections piece of the SRCA. Given widespread support for reform provisions that could have widespread impact, I hope we see some movement on the corrections front soon. But, sadly, given an array of problematic personalities and politics, I am not optimistic.”
Letter to Congressional Budget Office from U.S. Sentencing Commission (March 19, 2018)
Sentencing Law and Policy, Interesting new US Sentencing Commission analysis of possible impact of Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2017 (Mar. 22, 2018)
– Thomas L. Root
