The White House says it's seeking more candidates for leniency in an overcrowded federal prison system whose costs comprise a sizable percentage of the Justice Department's budget, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The Justice Department unveiled a revamped clemency process on Wednesday directed primarily at low-level felons imprisoned for at least 10 years who have clean records while in custody, the WSJ reported.
The effort is part of a broader administration push to scale back harsh penalties in some drug-related prosecutions and to address sentencing disparities arising from the 1980s crack cocaine epidemic that yielded disproportionately tough punishment for black drug offenders, according to the WSJ.
The system's population has rocketed in recent decades, creating rising multibillion-dollar expenses that officials say threaten other law enforcement priorities and that an inspector general's report last year characterized as a "growing crisis," the WSJ reported.
The United States incarcerates about a quarter of the world's prisoners and of the roughly 216,000 inmates in federal custody, nearly half are imprisoned for drug-related crimes, according to the WSJ.
Officials say they don't know how many of the tens of thousands of drug-related convicts would be eligible for early release, but an ideal candidate would meet six criteria, including no history of violence, no ties to criminal organizations or gangs and a clean prison record, the WSJ reported.
The inmate must have already served 10 years or more of his sentence and be likely to have received a substantially shorter offense if convicted of the same offense today, according to the WSJ. The Bureau of Prisons will notify all inmates of the criteria next week and provide electronic surveys to those who think they deserve clemency.
Attorney General Eric Holder has endorsed proposals to lower sentencing guideline ranges for certain drug offenders and directed prosecutors not to charge low-level, nonviolent drug offenders with crimes that entail mandatory minimum sentences, the WSJ reported.
The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 reduced that disparity and eliminated a five-year mandatory minimum for first-time possession of crack, but the law did not cover offenders sentenced before the law was approved, according to the WSJ. Officials are now turning their attention to identifying inmates who received sentences under the old guidelines.
