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When Senator Chuck Grassley, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, introduced a major sentencing reform bill last October, his move signaled that Congress intended to take decisive action on revamping the country's draconian sentencing laws. With the November elections on the horizon and Americans souring on their status as the country with the world's largest prison population, federal lawmakers may pick up the pace on crafting a reform package.

The Iowa Republican's bill, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015, aims to reduce mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug offenses and promote re-entry services for offenders who are nearing the end of their sentences. The bill would also apply provisions of the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act retroactively: Crack cocaine offenders sentenced after August 3, 2010,would be eligible for shorter sentences.

During the so-called war on drugs in the 1980s, Congress established mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes, which deprived judges of an important tool: the ability to exercise their own discretion in meting out prison sentences to fit the individual case. Instead, judges had to impose specific prison sentences as mandated by law. That change fueled an unprecedented increase in the federal prison population: In 1980, there were 24,640 people serving sentences in federal prisons; by 2014, that number jumped up to nearly 215,000.

The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and the subsequent battle over President Obama's pick to replace him have distracted Republicans from sentencing reform. Although momentum has slowed on a plan that could have attracted strong bipartisan support, criminal