The sentencing reform bills that died
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The sentencing reform bills that died is John Kiriakou's account of the legislative moment that came and went while he was serving his sentence at FCI Loretto.

On the table were a bipartisan bill called the Recidivism Reduction and Public Safety Act, sponsored by the Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and the Republican senator John Cornyn of Texas, and a US Sentencing Commission vote to lower the drug sentencing guidelines for all drug offences. The Commission's recommendations, Kiriakou says, would have granted relief to thousands of federal prisoners convicted of drug crimes, with conditions, caveats and criteria, but with thousands serving time "far beyond what was reasonable" getting their freedom back.

How they died

Both the Recidivism Reduction and Public Safety Act and the Smarter Sentencing Act died in the Senate without so much as a vote. Kiriakou assigns the responsibility to both parties in turn: the then majority leader, the Democrat Harry Reid, never brought them up; when power changed hands and the Republican Mitch McConnell became majority leader, he said the bills would no longer even be considered. "And that's where it all remains to this day."

The argument Kiriakou made for them was the one he makes about American incarceration generally, that the people concerned are not nameless and faceless, that their families are victims too, and that the money spent holding them could be earned and taxed instead.

See also

- Five per cent of the population, twenty-five per cent of the prisoners
- FCI Loretto
- Private prison system
- Letter from Loretto
