TRUMP'S PRISON PLAN TO RELEASE THOUSANDS OF INMATES
Andrea Drusch
WASHINGTON
Sweeping changes to the federal prison system will allow tens of thousands of federal inmates to be released from prison over the next 10 years, but there’s little data about who or where they are now.
The legislation signed by President Donald Trump on Friday makes big changes to the treatment and rehabilitation of low-level federal prisoners.
Qualifying Inmates — mostly people who have committed low-level drug offenses — can earn credits to be released from prison early and serve the remainder of their sentence in home confinement or halfway houses if they participate in the plan’s anti-recidivism programs such as job training, education and faith-based classes.
The Bureau of Prisons and Congressional Budget Office, which analyzed the plan for cost, estimated roughly 53,000 prisoners could be released over the next 10 years.
There are roughly 180,000 current federal inmates, according to the Bureau of Prisons, which declined to comment on which facilities would be impacted.
“It wouldn’t be prisons in any one specific location… but generally those classified as minimum security facilities or prison camps,” said Derek Cohen, director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Effective Justice, which supported the reforms. “Some of these places don’t even have fences right now.”
The Congressional Budget Office also said it did not have data broken down by location. There are 120 federal prisons located across the country, including in Fort Worth.
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