Via Families Against Mandatory
Minimums (FAMM), an interesting
memo from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, trying to calculate
how much the government would save if it let people out of
prison for having spent the amount of time there that newer and
more sensible federal sentencing guidelines would normally impose
for drug crimes.
Key excerpts:
If the courts were to grant the full reduction possible in
each case [of applying newer standard sentences retroactively], the
projected new average sentence for these offenders would be
102 months, a reduction of 23 months (or 18.4%). Based on this
reduction, the estimated total savings to the Federal Bureau
of Prisons (BOP) from the retroactive application of the 2014
drug guidelines amendment would be 83,525 bed years….
While the memo itself didn’t translate that figure into cold
hard cash money, the folks at Vox
in writing about this memo concluded:
A “bed year” is the cost of incarcerating one prisoner for one
year — which came out to a little
under $29,000 during fiscal year 2011.So that’s a total savings of about $2.4 billion (albeit spread
out over many years).
75 percent of those eligible for such sentence reduction are
black or hispanic, by the way.
Jacob Sullum from earlier this month on “Why
America Leads the World at Putting People in Cages.”
Some disclosure: FAMM’s founder Julie Stewart used to be my boss
23 years ago, and former Reason champ Mike Riggs now works
for them.
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