Article from FLN Staff.

President Trump is said to be mentioning criminal justice reform in his upcoming State of the Union speech, a marked improvement by an administration that recently cracked down on marijuana enforcement, reversing Obama era relaxations on marijuana policy. The administration is reported to be in talks with think tanks on methods to reduce recidivism and lower the federal incarceration rate.  Conservative groups have used these methods to great effect in Georgia and Texas.

One such program would assign prisoners with a counselor, which would be assigned to them from day one, and would help them adjust to life after prison. The Kochs are funding Safe Streets and Second Chances, a group that does extensive studying in prisons and makes recommendations based on data to lower recidivism rates. Such a policy would be implemented by executive order, whereby the Attorney General would open federal prisons to such groups in the hopes of actively rehabilitating prisoners, rather than just incarcerating them.

The federal government accounts for 10 percent of the total incarcerated population in the United States. more than any individual state in America.  The administration has been generally open to providing additional resources to prisoners while they are incarcerated but are unwilling to change policy on mandatory minimum sentencing, National Review reported. This is a promising trend, as pro-liberty ideas are put forth to the administration and are being received well.

Image Credit: By Michael Vadon (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons