Packed Prisons Prompt Early Inmate Release In U.S.

Los Angeles, CA (AHN) - Several states are planning to kill two bird with one stone by releasing inmates ahead of schedule to cut costs and decongest jails.

Leading the pack is California, which wants to set free 22,000 prisoners by 20 months ahead in an effort to reduce by $1.1 billion over the next two years the state's penitentiary system budget and to ease the overcrowding in the U.S. most populated jail. The early liberty would apply only to inmates who are in for nonviolent and nonsexual crimes.

In Rhode Island, the legislature passed last week a new law that reduces further the sentences of prisoners doing time for minor offenses. The move would bring down the state' jail maintenance bill by $8 billion over five years.

Kentucky wants to provide more space in its country prisons and private facilities by reducing its inmate population of 22,000 through an early release program. Mississippi, meanwhile, will set free nonviolent prisoners who had served a fourth of their sentence and its terminally ill convicts.

Marc Mauer, executive director of Sentencing Project, which is pushing for lighter sentencing, told Washington Post, "It's the fiscal stuff that's driving it... Do you want to build prisons or do you want to build colleges? If you're a governor, it's kind of come to that choice right now."

Laura Sager, a consultant for Michigan's Families Against Mandatory Minimums, attributed the bloated prison populations across the U.S. to mandatory sentencing regulations and tough penalties for drug-related offenses in the 1980s.