Many inmates were hopeful that they would be released early due to the First Step Act, which was passed by overwhelming majorities in Congress.
“The law allows inmates who are serving time for selling crack cocaine to ask a judge to reduce their prison sentences. It’s a belated recognition, supporters say, that tough-on-crime policies that required lengthy prison terms for crack dealers were too punitive and fell most heavily on African-Americans,” Reuters reported.
But just was thousands of prison inmates have been released by judges under the new law, federal prosecutors are looking for a way to keep others in jail and return some of these released back to prison.
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According to the Justice Department, because of the amount of drugs the offenders handled were too large they did not qualify for a reduced sentence.
The Justice Department said in a press statement that while it is trying to make sure that prisoners looking for early release under the First Step Act aren’t treated more leniently than defendants currently facing prosecution.
“This is a fairness issue,” the department said.
So far, more than 1,100 inmates have been released under the new law, said the Justice Department.
“In most of the 1,100 sentence-reduction cases, U.S. prosecutors did not oppose the inmate’s release. But in at least 81 cases, Reuters found, Justice Department lawyers have tried — largely unsuccessfully so far – to keep offenders behind bars. They argue that judges should base their decision on the total amount of drugs that were found to be involved during the investigation, rather than the often smaller or more vague amount laid out in the law they violated years ago,” Reuters reported.
“Many of these people have served in prison for five, 10, 15, 20 years and more. It’s time for them to be able to get on with their lives, and the notion the Department of Justice is just going to keep nagging at them and appealing these cases is not what we ever had in mind,” Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, one of the law’s authors, told Reuters.
