While it is tempting to believe that we keep our communities safe by locking up people convicted of violent crimes as long as possible and denying them time-reducing credit, the reality is that the people our society fears the most — people convicted of murder and who have been paroled on a life sentence — are actually the least likely to return to prison even for a minor infraction. Their return rate is roughly 1 percent. We should not accept their categorical exclusion from sentence-reducing measures that would permit their earlier return to the community, where they can be the next generation of violence interrupters.

There are other misleading promises in this bill. For example, it will reduce mandatory minimum sentences for perhaps 2,000 people annually; however, this part is not retroactive, so no one currently serving such a sentence will have it shortened. It also reduces the discrepancy in sentencing for crack versus powder cocaine, which Congress already did back in 2010. This bill just finally makes the change retroactive, which may benefit up to 2,600 people.

After decades of “get tough” rhetoric, drug wars and a prison-building boom that gave us the highest rate of incarceration in the world, it now appears that reform is possible — if only because we’re finally talking about it. But we must learn from our past, not replicate old mistakes in present-day reforms. This bill is likely to benefit private prison companies more than the incarcerated population, as it seems primed to increase the use of electronic monitoring systems created by private corporations to to track, surveil and control those who have been released from prison and are in home-detention and post-release transitional programs. Indeed, one of those corporations, GEO Group, proudly bills itself as “a complete electronic monitoring solutions provider” and already has 30,000 “participants” in its programs.

The total number of people benefited by the bill is shockingly small — it affects only about 4,000 in the federal prison system, which itself makes up less than 10 percent of the total population of people incarcerated in the United States. A large majority of incarcerated people are actually housed in state prisons and local jails, which are unaffected by this bill. Although some have celebrated the bill because it prohibits the shackling of women during childbirth, the practice of shackling pregnant women in all but the most extreme circumstances has been banned in federal prisons for 10 years, so the provision will likely have little to no practical effect.

I stand with advocates seeking to bring people home from prison sooner rather than later. It’s what I do. But we should not be tempted by the false promise that this is the beginning of a more expansive reform effort. Those in control have not taken any steps toward real criminal justice reform, which ideally would involve developing real alternatives to incarceration. When policymakers want to have that conversation, please count me in. But any would-be reform effort that begins by denying the benefits of therapeutic, educational and vocational programs to the people who could benefit most is not a “first step” — it’s a step in the wrong direction.

Keith Wattley is the executive director of UnCommon Law, a nonprofit law firm that provides therapeutic and legal counseling for people serving lengthy prison terms in California prisons.

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