In 1992, when he was just 14 years old, Sam Mandez was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The conviction itself was the result of shoddy police work and overzealous prosecutors. But in a ruling earlier this month, a Colorado trial judge re-sentenced Mandez to 30 years in prison, which will allow him to be released from custody in the next three or four years. “No one who cares about criminal justice reform, or about making our justice systems more fair and accountable, or about the value of a single human being, should be rooting against Mandez as he begins his journey toward a life beyond bars,” writes Brennan Center Fellow Andrew Cohen. // Read More

Earlier this summer, 3,100 people were released from federal prison under the First Step Act, which was signed into law late last year. While the bill marks an important step in the fight for criminal justice reform, it hardly fixes the crisis of mass incarceration in the United States. And while the First Step Act includes significant sentencing reforms, several key elements of the bill were not made retroactive.

But there are solutions. “Congress could make the First Step Act retroactive with a simple, one-page bill,” write Ames Grawert and Aliana Knoepfler, senior counsel and former legal intern at the Brennan Center. “Or, if Congress won’t act, the president can instruct the attorney general to identify the people who would benefit from retroactivity, and unilaterally commute their sentences one by one.” // Forward

Brennan Center Fellow Michael German served as an FBI special agent for 16 years before leaving the bureau as a whistleblower. In his new book, Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Democracy, released earlier this month, he recounts how the FBI has transformed into a secretive domestic intelligence agency after 9/11. In his account, he also describes how the FBI routinely protects his own malefactors and mistakes while letting white supremacists, terrorists, and foreign agents go free. German discussed his book and his experiences at the FBI in an episode of the Reason Podcast last week. // Reason

• Michael German on the difficulties of the whistle-blower system // The Atlantic
• Raya Koreh on social media monitoring of visa applicants and its potential impacts on U.S. tourism // Skift
• Lawrence Norden on the Senate’s recent approval of funding for election security // NPR
• Myrna Pérez on how allowing Americans with past convictions to vote can strengthen democracy // Politico