6,000 Prisoners Will Be Freed This Weekend. Here’s What to Know...

WNYC News | Oct 28, 2015

By this weekend, more than 6,000 federal prisoners across the United States will be set free. Most were drug offenders, and their release is a result of the U.S. Sentencing Commission's decision to ease overcrowding and roll back the harsh penalties given to nonviolent drug offenders in 1980s and 1990s.

It's one of the largest ever releases of federal prisoners at one time, but relatively few of them will be coming to New York.

Sources: Bureau of Justice Statistics and Washington Post using Bureau of Prisons data.
(WNYC)

WNYC teamed up with The Marshall Project to put the release in perspective and explore this apparent turning point in American thinking about criminal justice and incarceration.

WNYC's Jami Floyd spoke about it with John Keefe, Senior Editor of WNYC's Data News Team, and Simone Weichselbaum, a staff writer with the Marshall Project.

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