This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Saturday, November 21st, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Sentencing reform has languished for years, but there is recent hope that long sentences driven by mandatory minimums may be on the

wane.

In a recent edition of Cato Connects, Molly Gill of Families Against Mandatory Minimums and

Adam Bates of Cato discuss new legislative prospects

for criminal justice reform.

President Obama has been making a pretty big deal out of the fact that

6,000 inmates are going to be released out of the fact that 6,000 inmates are going to be released out of the federal system,

but is that entirely appropriate for the president to be trumping up this release of 6,000 people, Molly?

As much as you might like to take credit for him for this it was actually an

independent bipartisan agency the US Sentencing Commission that set this in motion over a year ago.

They looked at the sentencing guidelines which apply in all federal cases, including drug cases,

and decided that these sentences had always been actually just

a little too high and decided to shorten them.

Okay, so of the 6,000 prisoners to be released, many of them are out of prison already and are on some other form of

incarceration and as you know 600,000 people are returning from state federal

federal prisons every year.

This is a US Sentencing Commission policy

that is complying with a statutory mandate to do this kind of work.

What about Congress having been able to have reversed this policy?

Sure, I think some people think that this is the commission going off the reservation and doing something wild and crazy and it's actually within their mandate.

...