NBC News: 'The push starts now': With Trump's support, prison reform finally has a shot in Congress
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“The push starts now,” said Holly Harris, a longtime Republican strategist who leads the U.S. Justice Action Network, which recruits lawmakers on the left and right to overhaul the criminal justice system.
The trick is deciding how far to push.
The Republican-controlled House has already passed a bill that offers federal inmates more opportunities to prepare for freedom and rewards them with more “good-time credit” for behaving and participating in education and training programs. The measure, called the First Step Act, would provide a faster path to release for almost all federal inmates, many of whom would see months shaved off their release dates immediately, thanks to changes that would apply retroactively.
But the Senate is a tougher sell. A pair of senators ─ Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a Republican, and Dick Durbin of Illinois, a Democrat ─ have been fighting for years for a more sweeping set of changes that, rather than focusing on people already in prison, would target the source of mass incarceration by reducing sentences for nonviolent offenders. A third of the Senate’s membership have signed on as co-sponsors. Adding sentencing reform to the First Step Act would be an “important BIPARTISAN win,” Grassley tweeted Thursday.