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                  Largest US Prisoner Release to Begin Oct. 30

   by Carolyn Presutti

   Fifty-eight-year-old Greg Nelson stands at the bus stop as diesel
   trucks laboriously climb a hill and cars pass him by.

   Bus number 35 is late.

   Permission slip in hand, he has one hour to get to the pharmacy and
   back. Bus tokens, something new and foreign to him, are in his pocket.

   In 2012, Nelson was driving to a drug deal when police stopped him and
   found 55 grams of heroin, with a street value of $6,000, in his car. He
   had no weapon or any prior conviction.

   He was sentenced to four years in prison on federal conspiracy and
   distribution charges.

   ''"Any time is a long time when you are incarcerated," says Nelson, who
   is currently residing in a Maryland halfway-house and slated to be
   released from his sentence on October 30 as part of the biggest
   prisoner release in U.S. history.

   Following a recent decision by the United States Sentencing Commission,
   federal sentencing guidelines have been reduced for non-violent drug
   offenders, part of a move to lower harsh sentences for non-violent
   crimes and to ease prison overcrowding.

   Six-thousand will leave by early November, and another 40,000 will get
   early release over the next few years.

   Mandatory sentencing debate

   In the 1990's, Julie Stewart's brother was sentenced to five years for
   growing marijuana in the Washington, the northwestern U.S. state that
   recently legalized cannabis.

   "When I was a kid, murderers went to prison for 20 years, not the
   people growing marijuana or selling drugs on the street corner," says
   Stewart, who founded [1]the non-profit Families against Mandatory
   Minimums in 1991.

   "We have just incarcerated, incarcerated, incarcerated, because it's
   easy," she says. "It makes people feel good but it doesn't actually
   make us safer, and it's really, really expensive."

   But not everyone agrees. According [2]to FBI figures, U.S. crime has
   dropped 12 percent over the past five years. Some analysts say that was
   due in part to the tough sentencing guidelines, and some prosecutors
   predict violent crime will rise in lockstep with shorter sentences.

   "The recidivism rate among offenders nationwide is nearly 77%," says
   Steve Wasserman, treasurer of the National Association of Assistant US
   Attorneys.

   "It's virtually guaranteed a large percentage of the individuals, the
   inmates being released, are going to reoffend," he adds, citing [3]a
   study from the National Institute of Justice.

   While Stewart and fellow advocates of individualized, non-mandatory
   sentences point out that offenders being released early are non-violent
   drug criminals whose original punishments never fit the crime,
   Wasserman calls the observation moot.

   "Drug dealers by definition cannot go to the police when their drugs
   are stolen, so the idea that drug traffickers are engaged in some
   innocuous, non-violent act is just false," he says. "These are
   individuals that habitually carry firearms."

   Volunteers of America Halfway House

   Volunteers of America Chesapeake runs the residential re-entry house in
   Maryland where Nelson, who is slated for early release, now lives.

   Program Director Jennifer Masslieno is busier than she's ever been in
   her career due to the thousands being released. She can house 148 men
   and women and manage 50 on home confinement. She currently has one slot
   left in residential capacity and is 16 over her limit on home
   confinement. She's also down two case workers, but she worries more
   about the inmates who won't go through transitional housing.

   "There's a certain population that's going to be released, and they're
   going directly to the community," she says. "So they aren't going to
   have re-entry services. I think every offender should have re-entry
   services, whether they come from a high-level security or a low-level
   security facility."

   Masslieno's center, where inmates stay before they get total freedom,
   counsels them on securing jobs and housing.

   "They need to have the tools to be successful and not go back to the
   lifestyle that they previously went through prior to incarceration,"
   she says.

   Nelson says his time in the center has prepared him for release and to
   be successful without drugs.

   "They introduce you back into society, but they do it slowly," he says.
   "I think the biggest thing I learned was to separate what I want from
   what I need. What I want doesn't matter, as long as I have everything I
   need."
     __________________________________________________________________

   [4]http://www.voanews.com/content/largest-us-prisoner-release-to-begin-
   october-30/3010781.html

References

   1. http://famm.org/about/famms-history/
   2. https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/violent-crime/violent-crime-topic-page/violentcrimemain_final
   3. http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/pages/welcome.aspx#statistics
   4. http://www.voanews.com/content/largest-us-prisoner-release-to-begin-october-30/3010781.html