The reductions came by way of the U.S. Sentencing Commission in 2014 and the more than 6,000 inmates that have been released is just the first wave.
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According to The New York Times:
Over the next few years, as a result of an across-the-board adjustment of federal drug penalties by the United States Sentencing Commission, tens of thousands more inmates may benefit from reductions in their terms, and new sentences will be somewhat shorter than they were in recent decades.
The shift reflects concerns about the severe overcrowding and expense of federal prisons and, even more, the widely shared sense among many leaders of both political parties as well as criminologists that the harsh federal penalties of the war on drugs were often too extreme. President Obama has declared “criminal justice reform” a priority and on Monday [planned] to visit Newark to “highlight the re-entry process of formerly incarcerated individuals,” the White House said Friday.
The mass release has some law enforcement officials concerned.
“For the far-right, it’s about dollar signs; for the far-left, it’s the view that incarceration is unjust,” Don Mihalek, legislative director for Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, told TheBlaze.
“… The Sentencing Commission approved these reductions with a broad brush by studying policy papers and not looking at any individual cases. We are just transferring a federal problem,” he added. “This is just going to be a problem for state and local law enforcement. This is a dangerous path with dangerous people during a documented crime wave.”
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