Norton to Host Roundtable on Returning Citizens, Next Week

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) will host a roundtable to examine ways to ensure assistance for returning citizens to the District of Columbia as they transition back to society, including federal inmates from D.C. whose sentences were retroactively reduced last year by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, on Tuesday, December 1, 2015, at the Old City Council Chambers (441 Judiciary Sq. NW), from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. Norton, who is also co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Black Men and Boys, will chair a panel of federal officials, which will hear testimony from federal and D.C. Code returning citizens, officials from halfway houses, and service providers. Sitting with Norton on the panel will be officials from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), the U.S. Probation Office for the District of Columbia, and the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for the District of Columbia (CSOSA). Norton is sponsoring the roundtable in light of the recent early release of the first 6,000 federal inmates as a result of the U.S. Sentencing Commission's reduced sentences for certain federal drug offenders, including 45 from the District. However, the D.C. roundtable will focus on two groups of citizens returning to D.C.: inmates whose drug sentences were recently reduced, and the much larger number of D.C. Code offenders, also housed by BOP, as a result of the Revitalization Act, which required the federal government to pick up the cost of certain state costs from the city.

"There is great interest in this month's early release of the first 6,000 low-level federal drug offenders in the U.S., with another 8,500 more to be released next year," Norton said. "We are bringing together federal and D.C. agencies, service providers, D.C. residents, and returning citizens to learn and discuss how to be more helpful to our returning citizens. Since BOP houses both D.C. Code and federal offenders, the roundtable will focus on both. We want to hear directly from returning citizens, but also from all of the responsible agencies and service providers. We will be particularly concerned to learn how responsible agencies can help our citizens avoid returning to prison."

Norton delivered this week's Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) "Message to America," focusing on the CBC's work that led to the fight against mandatory minimums and reducing non-violent drug sentences.