SECOND CHANCES.

• Author: Bubar, Joe
• Position: Prisoners life with their families

The United States locks people up at a higher rate than any other country. Now Congress is easing some of the tough-on-crime laws that have put so many Americans behind bars.

Last May, Kennadi Williams celebrated her 16th birthday at Topgolf, a driving range near her home in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Her mom, Danielle, her 13-year-old brother, Kendall, and her friends were all there. But as Kennadi hit golf balls, she couldn't help but think about one person who was missing: her dad.

"I wish he could have been there," says Kennadi, a junior at Central High School. "He would have enjoyed it."

Kennadi's dad, Keith Williams, hasn't been able to come to one of her birthday parties since she was 3 years old. He hasn't been able to attend her high school cheerleading competitions, drop her off at school, or watch her brother, Kendall, play the saxophone in his middle school band. That's because Kennadi and Kendall's dad was sentenced to 22-and-a-half years in prison in 2006 for being involved in a drug dealing operation and possessing a firearm.

Kennadi and Kendall are far from the only kids who've had to deal with the struggles of having a parent locked up. An estimated 2.7 million kids in the U.S. have an incarcerated parent. A large number of these parents, like Keith Williams, received long prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenses.

Now a new law is delivering a second chance to many people behind bars and providing hope to their families. In December, President Trump signed the First Step Act, which makes the most substantial changes in a generation to the tough-on-crime laws that ballooned the federal prison population and created a criminal justice system that many conservatives and liberals view as costly and unfair.

Among other provisions, the law eases some of the harsh mandatory penalties given to nonviolent drug offenders beginning three decades ago. It creates new programs aimed at improving prison conditions and preparing inmates for re-entry into their communities. And it makes it easier for prisoners to earn early release for good behavior.

"This will keep our communities safer, and provide hope and a second chance, to those who earn it," Trump tweeted in December. "In addition to everything else, billions of dollars will be saved."

The 'War on Drugs'

The U.S. has the highest prison population rate in the world, according to the online database World Prison Brief--even surpassing those of authoritarian countries such as Russia, China, and Iran. Nearly 2.2 million people were behind bars in the U.S. in 2016--a rate of about 1 out of every 100 adults. This phenomenon is called mass incarceration.

In fact, although the U.S. accounts for just 5 percent of the world's population, it has 25 percent of the world's prison population.

The U.S. didn't always lock up so many people. In 1980, about 500,000 people were in jails and prisons-roughly 1 out of every 330 adults (see "Behind Bars," p. 14).

So what happened?

Many experts say the rise in incarceration has a lot to do with the tough-on-crime laws that were implemented in the 1980s and '90s to crack down on drug dealers.

"The U.S. is unique in its criminalization and punishment of drug users," says Elizabeth Hinton, a history professor at Harvard University and the author of a book on mass incarceration. "We sentence [drug offenders] to prison for extremely long periods of time."

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan declared a "War on Drugs. " A few years later, when the crack cocaine epidemic exploded across cities, he signed into law mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. Mandatory minimums required judges to hand out automatic minimum prison terms for certain crimes without taking into account individual circumstances.

Many people say these mandatory minimums disproportionately affected African-Americans and contributed to the current racial disparity in U.S. prisons. Today, African-Americans are imprisoned at more than five times the rate of white Americans.

Experts point out that the mandatory minimum for crack cocaine--an inexpensive drug that was associated with poor, urban blacks--was much harsher than for cocaine--a more expensive drug that was associated with wealthier, suburban whites. The mandatory minimum for possession of 50 grams of crack--the weight of a candy bar--was 10 years in prison. To get the same sentence for powdered cocaine, someone had to possess 5,000 grams--enough to fill a briefcase.

The drug war continued into the 1990s, with President Bill Clinton signing a crime bill that put more police on the streets and created the "three strikes and you're out" law. This law automatically gave mandatory life imprisonment to some three-time offenders.

Several states began adopting "three strikes" laws as well. At times, the laws mandated sentences that many said were unfair or even outrageous...