Attorney General Eric Holder endorsed a proposal that would result in shorter prison sentences for many nonviolent drug traffickers on Thursday and argued the change would rein in runaway federal prison costs and create a fairer criminal justice system, according to the Associated Press.
A November 2013 report by the American Civil Liberties Union says at least 3,279 prisoners in the U.S. are serving life without parole sentences for nonviolent drug and property crimes, the AP reported. Nearly four in every five were convicted of crimes involving drugs.
"This focused reliance on incarceration is not just financially unsustainable - it comes with human and moral costs that are impossible to calculate," Holder said on Thursday, according to the AP.
In a country where nearly half of all federal inmates are serving time for drug crimes, the harshest penalties should be reserved for violent drug defendants and criminals with long rap sheets, Holder said, the AP reported.
Holder directed prosecutors in August to stop charging many nonviolent drug defendants with offenses that carry mandatory minimum sentences, according to the AP. He has also said he also wants to divert people convicted of low-level offenses to drug treatment and community-service programs and to expand a prison program to allow the release of some elderly, nonviolent offenders.
Bipartisan legislation pending in Congress would give judges more discretion in sentencing defendants for drug crimes, the AP reported.
While Holder's announcement Thursday won support from groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National District Attorneys Association (NDAA) is opposing the proposal, according to the AP.
They argue that mandatory sentences have been helpful in securing cooperation from defendants and witnesses and that the majority of federal prisoners "have been very bad actors for a long time," the AP reported.
"Rewarding convicted felons with lighter sentences because America can't balance its budget doesn't seem fair to both victims of crime and the millions of families in America victimized every year by the scourge of drugs in America's communities," Raymond Morrogh, the top prosecutor in Fairfax County, Virginia, and the director-at-large of NDAA, said in prepared remarks, according to the AP.
