Attorney General Eric Hoder will call for less severe sentences for low-level drug offenders

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. will announce on Monday the scaling back of the harsh mandatory sentences for low-level drug offenders—those without ties to gangs or drug organizations.

This milestone announcement comes as part of a Justice Department prison reform package, The Washington Post reports. Holder will also unveil a plan to reduce sentences for elderly and nonviolent inmates, as well to find alternatives to prison for other nonviolent criminals in his speech to the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates in San Francisco today.

The United States has the highest number of incarcerated individuals of any first world nation, and the mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders are a huge part of why the US produces so many prisoners. According to CNN, Holder called these sentences “excessive,” in that they gave the same treatment to these low-level offenders as they did to drug cartel members, violent criminals, and even drug kingpins. These changes could greatly reduce the amount of inmates in US prisons, and also cut the growing costs of the ‘prison business’.

According to a Pew Study done last year, the cost of prisons to US taxpayers in 2009 was over $10 billion. Furthermore, non-violent offenders cost more than half of this amount.

Photo courtesy of US Department of Justice, Wikimedia Commons