Congressional Budget Office estimates bill to end federal marijuana prohibition would reduce federal prison time "by 73,000 person-years, among existing and future inmates"

As noted in this prior post, late last week a high-profile federal marijunana reform bill with provisions seeking to redress the harms of the drug war, the MORE Act, was passed by the US House of Representative.  An accounting of the possible fiscal impact of the bill (which is H.R. 3884) was released here by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and sentencing fans might find these calculations especially interesting:

H.R. 3884 would federally decriminalize cannabis (marijuana), expunge the records of people convicted of federal cannabis offenses, and require resentencing of some federal prisoners.  As a result, CBO estimates, thousands of current inmates would be released earlier than under current law.  In the future, decriminalization also would reduce the number of people in federal prisons and the amount of time federal inmates serve.  In total, over the 2021-2030 period, CBO estimates that H.R. 3884 would reduce time served by 73,000 person-years, among existing and future inmates. CBO's analysis accounts for time served by offenders convicted of cannabis-only crimes and by those convicted of another crime in addition to a cannabis offense.

Federal prisoners generally are not eligible for federal benefit programs.  By reducing the prison population, CBO estimates, H.R. 3884 would increase the number of federal beneficiaries, compared with current law, and thus increase direct spending for federal benefit programs by $636 million over the 2021-2030 period.