Editorial: A Much-Needed Prison Reform

President Obama’s decision to change the way prisoners are treated in the federal correctional system corresponds to a movement to rectify laws and regulations that were approved years ago in favor of “get tough on crime” campaigns.

Obama adopted the recommendations made by the Department of Justice to eliminate the use of restrictive housing measures such as isolation for juveniles and inmates who have committed low-level infractions. The proposal also includes expanding mental health units to care for prisoners unable to function with the rest of the prison population, limiting punitive segregation and asking wardens to extend the amount of time convicts spend outside their cells. States like California, Colorado and New Mexico have already made changes to reduce the number of people in solitary confinement.

This comes one day after the Supreme Court ordered that their 2012 decision forbidding sentencing juveniles to life in prison without parole be applied retroactively. The options the Court gave nearly 2,000 people in this situation include obtaining a new sentence or making them eligible for parole. In many of these cases, automatic sentences were given in cases of homicide without considering mitigating factors such as the young age of the accused.

Meanwhile, Congress is looking at a bipartisan bill aiming to lower sentences, such as those given to people found guilty of non-violent drug crimes. The project is currently stalled in the Senate because a handful of Republicans are going against their Party to avoid weakening their perceived hard-line stance on crime.

The United States has the largest corrections system in the world, which comes at a gargantuan cost and presents an extremely elevated rate of recidivism. Unfortunately, politics is partially responsible for this. As example is Senator Ted Cruz, who supported the sentence reform project in the past but now, during his presidential campaign, is opposing it, citing that thousands of dangerous felons will end up on the streets.

Caging criminals and throwing away the key does not work. Neither does holding them in inhumane conditions. Current proposals for change are attempting to find the right way to reinsert individuals into society rather than writing them of.