A set of bold recommendations was issued by the Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections on Tuesday to reform the federal justice system while enhancing public safety and saving the government billions of dollars.
The Congressionally mandated blue-ribbon panel, chaired by former Republican Congressman J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, released its new report, “Transforming Prisons, Restoring Lives,” which includes the findings of its year-long investigation into the nation’s overcrowded and costly federal prisons.
The bipartisan panel was established by Congress in 2014 following growing concerns about the cost and scale of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), which currently houses 197,000 people with a budget of $7.5 billion this year.
According to Alan Mollohan, the task force’s vice-chair, the BOP’s seven-fold increase since the 1980s is not sustainable.
“The BOP has been operating at crisis levels for decades,” Mollohan, a former Democratic congressman from West Virginia, said. “As a result, its policies and practices have not kept up with best practice in the field, presenting a missed opportunity to rehabilitate those who are confined in federal prisons and thus promote public safety.”
The task force recommended a move away from the “one size fits all” federal justice system to one based on each individual case. The approach is grounded in research evidence as the most effective means of reducing recidivism.
The task force also recommended reserving mandatory minimum penalties for drug offenses for “drug kingpins” who are found to have served a leadership role in a large cartel. Additionally, it called for incentivizing program and treatment participation in prison by providing earned time off of sentences.
Finally, the task force said, the risks, needs and assets of the BOP’s population should be better assessed, while programing and treatment should be aligned to reduce recidivism and enhance public safety.
The task force’s recommendations are part of a larger effort spearheaded in Congress by such leaders as Rep. Mike Bishop (R-MI), House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations Subcommittee Ranking Member Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) and Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA), who all authored H.R. 3713, the Sentencing Reform Act of 2015, as part of the House Judiciary Committee’s ongoing bipartisan criminal justice reform initiative.
“I applaud my House Judiciary colleagues for coming together in support of this bipartisan reform to our nation’s federal sentencing guidelines,” Bishop said in November during a House Judiciary Committee markup of the Sentencing Reform Act. “This fiscally and socially responsible legislation takes the right steps to provide flexible sentencing for those who deserve it, while still ensuring the safety of our families and local communities remains the number one priority. We can and must do more to address the problems in our criminal justice system today, and the Sentencing Reform Act will be an important part of that process.”