As recently as 1990, America’s federal prison system contained too few inmates and sent many serious criminals away for sentences that were too short. In recent years, however, the 121-institution Federal Bureau of prisons has grown too large (210,000 inmates), too expensive ($6.8 billion last year), too overcrowded (it’s at 123 percent of capacity) and too ineffective (recidivism rates remain well over 50 percent) to justify its continued growth. That’s why it’s important that Congress consider some newly proposed legislation which would begin the process of making federal prison system smaller, more effective and less expensive. The bill in question, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, takes proven, commonsense steps that will preserve safety while serving the cause of justice and saving money.

Fundamentally, the bill, which counts supporters ranging from libertarian philanthropist Charles Koch to the left-wing Center for American Progress, draws on things that have worked at the state level. Over the past decade, dozens of states ranging from the deep blue California and Rhode Island to the ardently Republican Texas and South Carolina have shrunk prison populations by separating the truly dangerous from the merely misguided.  In all of these places, crime rates have generally continued on the downward course they’ve set for the past 30 years.

And many of the reforms made at the state level—like many proposed at the federal level in the law now before Congress—are just common sense. It’s foolish that current federal mandatory minimum sentence laws make it impossible for judges to show some lenience on sentencing to a single mother who gets drawn into the underworld out of desperation. It’s equally problematic when early release standards (there’s no parole in the federal system) offer little recognition for those who really turn their lives around behind bars.

It’s also a good idea to allow some relatively low risk offenders to return to their communities under intensive supervision with a promise of a quick return to prison if they screw up.  Programs like this have worked well in places ranging from Texas to Hawaii and deserve a try at the federal level. Federal prison officials, likewise, should have the powers enjoyed by many of their colleagues at the state level to provide phone, email and visitation privileges as an incentive for good behavior.  While it makes all of these reforms and more, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act doesn’t free anyone from prison who hasn’t done something to earn early release or arbitrarily shorten any criminal sentence.

And one doesn’t have to buy many of the claims made by reformers on both the far-left and libertarian right to believe that proposals like the ones now before Congress are good ideas.  Indeed, almost everyone doing time in the federal prison system has committed a serious crime and even a large portion of people serving time for “nonviolent” offenses have acts of violence elsewhere on their records. While many do get sentenced for drug offenses, likewise, it’s nearly impossible to end up in the federal pen for simple possession of a small quantity of illegal drugs. But there are still a lot of reasonably low risk offenders in the system who aren’t particularly likely to prey on society if released. Indeed, warehousing many of them makes it harder to provide effective punishment for the truly dangerous criminals.

In short, it’s possible to believe that expanding the federal prison system once had value while simultaneously believing we should work to shrink it today. States have pointed the way toward a better correctional system. Now Congress needs to follow and reform the federal prisons.

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