Senator Cory Booker brought a sweeping criminal justice reform bill on Thursday, turning into the first 2020 presidential candidate to place forth an in-depth plan to amend you. S .’s prison device.

The invoice, called the Next Step Act, includes a collection of bold reforms that largely jump past the incremental progress of preceding payments, like 2018’s landmark First Step Act, which Booker co-sponsored.

“It’s been 75 days for the reason that First Step Act become signed into regulation, and already, it is changing lives,” the New Jersey Democrat said in an announcement. “But the First Step Act is simply as its call suggests – it’s miles one step at the long street toward solving our damaged crook justice system.”

The bill could reduce mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, making the longest mandatory sentence ten years instead of twenty years. The First Step Act reduced the minimum sentences for repeat offenders but is no longer for first-time offenders.

The bill could also eliminate the discrepancy between crack and powder cocaine sentences, which were first reduced in 2010 from 100:1 to 18:1 and carried out retroactively inside the First Step Act. Racial minorities are disproportionately sentenced for crack cocaine offenses: In the financial year 2017, ninety-four percent of offenders have been black or Hispanic, in step with information from the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

Booker additionally places special attention on formerly incarcerated people, consisting of measures inside the bill that might make it easier for those with criminal facts to discover jobs and attain expert licenses. The invoice could additionally reinstate vote-casting rights to former felons nationwide.

Several Next Step Act reforms overlap with the marijuana legalization bill Booker introduced last week. Both payments call for legalizing the drug nationally, expunging crook information for those charged with marijuana ownership, and making investment cash into groups harmed using drugs.

Criminal justice reform is becoming a main difficulty during the 2020 presidential marketing campaign. Bipartisan guide for the issue is at its highest stage in recent years, as evidenced by the First Step Act’s passing with enthusiastic assistance from President Donald Trump.

“People thought passing the First Step Act became impossible, but we proved them incorrect. We can do this again,” Booker said at a press convention announcing the bill.

None of Booker’s fellow Democratic presidential contenders within the Senate have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill yet. Two declared candidates, senators Kamala Harris of California and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, are former government prosecutors.