Federal Prison Reform Act Of 2013

With its ever-growing population, the amount of inmates has grown by over 700% throughout the past century. This staggering amount far exceeds that of the United States’ population, making 32% look diminutive in comparison. Currently, there are more than 200,000 incarcerated people that are being detained inside a federal prison facility. In an attempt to improve public safety, a set of policies such as the “tough on crime” movement have been enacted, using punishment as the sole response to crime. Penalties such as the three strikes, zero tolerance and mandatory sentencing have resulted in lengthier, and more severe punishments. This in turn, has affected the government on all levels as these policies have become adopted; there has been increased amounts of arrests, capital punishment, and racial profiling in more recent events. With this information in mind, it is plain to see that there is …show more content…
Though the bill itself has not been enacted, it has been explored and referred to the committee within the judiciary. Its main goals are to increase public safety, establish offender risk and needs assessments for a more effective and efficient system, and to implement a validated post-sentencing risk and needs assessment. As of January of this year, there have been multiple proposals for significant changes to the federal sentencing guidelines. These new proposals are intended to have an enormous impact on the thousands of inmates that currently reside within federal prison walls. One of the many changes from the recent proposals made include a new update on the two point federal sentence reduction for drug offenders, which have had retroactive effects. Due to this, many of the new motions have been proposed and are currently pending. Retroactivity would allow certain federal drug prisoners to request their prison sentence by two guideline