Report: US to release 6,000 federal prisoners

The U.S. Justice Department is set to release about 6,000 prisoners early in the largest one-time release of federal inmates, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

The release, scheduled for between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2, is an effort to reduce overcrowding and provide relief to drug offenders who received harsh sentences over the past three decades, the newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The inmates will be set free by the department's Bureau of Prisons. Most will go to halfway houses and home confinement before being put on supervised release, the Post said.

“Today’s announcement is nothing short of thrilling because it carries justice,” said Jesselyn McCurdy, a senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, to the New York Times. “Far too many people have lost years of their lives to draconian sentencing laws born of the failed drug war. People of color have had to bear the brunt of these misguided and cruel policies. We are overjoyed that some of the people so wronged will get their freedom back.”

A Justice Department spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

The early release follows action by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency that sets sentencing policies for federal crimes. The panel reduced the potential punishment for drug offenders last year and made the change retroactive.

The commission's action is separate from an effort by President Barack Obama to grant clemency to some nonviolent drug offenders, an initiative that has resulted in the early release of 89 inmates.

The sentencing panel estimated that its change in guidelines could result in 46,000 of the roughly 100,000 drug offenders in federal prison qualifying for early release. The 6,000 figure is the first batch in that process, the Post said.

There are 206,000 inmates in federal prisons, up from about 25,000 in 1980, according to the Bureau of Prisons website. There were a total of 1.56 million inmates in federal and state prisons at the end of 2014, according to Department of Justice figures.

The push for sentencing reform has come as U.S. crime rates have drastically declined over the past two decades. 

U.S. senators last week proposed a plan to reform criminal justice, aiming to scrap sentencing laws that lead to overcrowding.

Al Jazeera with Reuters