The Department of Justice will free over 6,000 people from federal prisons over the next few days, most of them drug offenders.
FOX News reports:
Justice Department to begin release of over 6,000 federal inmates under new guidelines
The Department of Justice on Friday will begin releasing some 6,112 federal inmates under the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s new sentencing retroactivity guidelines for drug offenders.
This will be the largest one-time release of federal inmates ever, a law enforcement official told Fox News.
The timeframe for release by the DOJ’s Bureau of Prisons is Oct. 30 through Nov. 2. Under the terms of these new sentencing guidelines, which took effect on Nov. 1, 2014, the Justice Department was given one year to prepare for the release of these prisoners.
In a background briefing on Wednesday, a Justice Department official told reporters that 77 percent of those being released in the coming days are currently in half-way houses or in home confinement.
As an official put it, their release will serve as an “official handoff” from the Bureau of Prisons to probation.
Of those 6,112 federal inmates slated for release, 1,764 will be turned over to U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), where they will either be deported or face deportation proceedings.
Here’s a video report from CNN:
(Image:Source)
