By Nicole Flatow
The American Legislative Exchange Council was a driving force behind moves to impose tougher sentences and inflate the U.S. prison population. But on Monday, the conservative, corporate-backed group adopted model legislation that would reform draconian mandatory minimum prison sentences, according to Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which sponsored the legislation.
The ALEC Board of Directors passed a version of the Justice Safety Valve Act, a bipartisan bill introduced in both houses of Congress to give judges discretion to reduce statutory minimum sentences that impose onerous sentences for a range of drug and other crimes, FAMM Florida Project Director Greg Newburn told ThinkProgress. ALEC Legislative Director Cara Sullivan did not return an email inquiry from ThinkProgress. She did, however, tell the Daily Caller in an email response that the bill would help “ensure lengthy sentences and prison spaces are reserved for dangerous offenders, allowing states to focus their scarce public safety resources on offenders that are a real threat to the community.”
This language tracks a move in many states to implement “smart” criminal justice reform, motivated both by the onerous cost of bloated prisons and by recognition that over-criminalization does not benefit public safety. But the move is also a major reversal of course for ALEC, which previously supported mandatory minimum sentences that would apply regardless of whether the defendant was sentenced for possession, distribution, or cultivation. It also advocated for three-strikes laws that have since been toned down in most states, and developed a model “Truth in Sentencing” bill — passed into law in at least 25 states — that required every inmate to serve at least 85 percent of their sentence, regardless of their rehabilitation or other factors.
Read More Reversing Course, ALEC Supports Reform Of Mandatory Minimum Sentences | ThinkProgress.
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