Figures show large drop in US inmate numbers tied to sentencing reform
Source: The Guardian
The largest network of US prisons has reported its first significant drop in inmates in 30 years, according to officials, as recent de-escalations in the long-running “war on drugs” begin to show up in national incarceration statistics.
Department of Justice prisons director Charles Samuels revealed the “unprecedented” fall in federal prison numbers at a meeting of the US Sentencing Commission in Washington this week to consider across-the-board cuts to penalty guidelines for drug crime.
The commission projects that downgrading the lengths of sentences in this way will eventually allow the Bureau of Prisons – the largest corrections department in the country – to reduce its population by 6,550 inmates at the end of five years.
Latest figures, for the first half of the 2014 fiscal year – the six months from last October – show a year-on-year decrease of 3,521 inmates in the 119 federal prisons run by the bureau. Officials say the decrease appears to be more than the usual seasonal variations and already “far exceeds” any previous declines.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/14/prisons-numbers-figures-inmate-reduction
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