President Donald Trump's prison reform legislation will face a test this summer when roughly 4,000 inmates are released early.
As the Washington Examiner noted, the inmates are due out in July. They're being released early thanks to a portion of the First Step Act called the "good time" credit."
Trump has vowed to crack down on crime but also reform the nation's prison system, so what happens after July's release could provide an indicator of how the reform bill, which he signed into law in December, will work.
"There's a lot of concern that they have to get this right. Folks like [Sen.] Tom Cotton are just waiting for someone to do something stupid," a source with White House ties told the Examiner.
Some of the thousands of inmates slated to be released already are in halfway homes as they prepare for re-entry into society. The release was originally supposed to happen in December, but a clerical error pushed it back by about seven months.
The First Step Act drew praise from both sides of the aisle and passed by wide margins in both houses of Congress. Several hundred inmates have already been released under the law ahead of July's mass release.
Some lawmakers were skeptical of the legislation, however, including Cotton, R-Ark., and Sens. John Kennedy, R-La., Ben Sasse, R-Neb., Jim Risch, R-Idaho, and Deb Fischer, R-Neb.
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