The federal sentencing reforms that Donald Trump endorsed last week could shorten the terms of 2,700 or so drug offenders who are already in prison and perhaps another 2,200 who are sent there each year. That amounts to 1.5 percent of the current federal prison population and 3 percent of the federal defendants sentenced in fiscal year 2017, respectively.
These reforms, which are included in the Senate version of the aptly named FIRST STEP Act, are extremely modest, especially since the federal system accounts for only 9 percent of the 2.2 million people incarcerated across the country. Yet as Jacob Sullum notes, opponents of the bill portray it as a reckless gamble with public safety, which is how they portray every attempt to make our obscenely bloated, mindlessly punitive criminal justice system even slightly more proportionate and discriminating.
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