“Sen. Cory Booker acknowledges that the Senate’s criminal justice bill is not perfect. But he doesn’t hesitate to point out that ‘it’s in my lifetime the first reversal of mass incarceration in the federal level.’
“The legislation contains some big compromises: It keeps many mandatory minimum sentences, does not shorten sentences for violent offenders, and adds a new mandatory sentencing enhancement for fentanyl, a powerful opioid, when it’s present in trafficked heroin. Booker said that if it were only up to him, the legislation would have gone much further in rolling back punishments, and it wouldn’t have added the mandatory enhancement for fentanyl.”