Rocky road ahead for drug offenders freed under new laws

About 6,000 federal prisoners will be released Nov. 1 after having their terms reduced under new and retroactive sentencing guidelines for nonviolent drug offenses. Most of them are currently living in halfway homes, but even from there the transition to the world outside of prison can be difficult.

“Freedom is like a slap in the face,” said Anthony Papa, who spent 12 years in a New York state prison for selling four ounces of cocaine. Released in 1997, Papa has since become an advocate for criminal justice reform with the Drug Policy Alliance.

“The systematic dependency of prison, you have to let loose of it and that’s hard,” Papa said. “When you’re in prison, you get your three squares [meals] and, now that you’re on your own, you’ve got to get a job to work and stay out of trouble.”

Papa said that his time in a halfway home was “like a dream,” but a bizarre and jarring one, where he felt like he had only some control over his fate.

“I felt like I had one foot in the free world, and one foot still in prison. It can get confusing at times. … You think you’re free — you’re not free,” he said. “Released prisoners need a support group to keep them in check with the reality that they could still go back to prison if they mess up. You always have that continuous threat of being put back in prison.”

The release of the inmates has been about a year in the making, a federal Bureau of Prisons spokesman told Al Jazeera. Unnamed federal officials broke the news Tuesday, but the bureau spokesman on Wednesday could not provide any additional details about the releases.

Media reports gave the false impression of a “jailbreak, and that was concerning to us,” said Kevin Ring, strategies director with Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

Ring said that thousands of convicts leave halfway homes throughout the year, and that the sentences they are serving conform to the new guidelines that the U.S. Sentencing Commission approved last year.

“They’re not getting out any earlier than someone who was sentenced today would get out,” he said. 

There are 30,000 federal prisoners who could eventually be eligible for release, the Bureau of Prisons told its halfway home managers in a memo sent out this spring.

“At least in your halfway house, you’re closer to home. You can start the process of getting on with your life. It’s not great. It’s not freedom. It’s definitely a halfway step. But for some people a baby step is a good,” Ring said.

Still, being back in their old neighborhood can pose risks for those released, Papa said.

“They go back to same neighborhood, the bell rings, the same old habits get in,” he said, emphasizing the importance of the newly freed getting help from other ex-convicts who have made the transition back into society. “Substance abuse problems are old habits that can kick in very easily.”

The prisoner release comes amid a national debate on the course of the "war on drugs,” a campaign of strict sentencing for drug possession and sale that began in the 1970s. Both conservative and liberal leaders have expressed skepticism about the get-tough approach, arguing that harsh punishments are costly and inhumane, and that law enforcement tactics unfairly target the poor and people of color.