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According to a March 18th article in The New York Times, there has been a surge in violence within New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex and other jails across the country. In particular, correction officers have struggled with an increasing concentration of mentally ill individuals who experts say often respond defiantly or erratically to the harsh, zero-tolerance disciplinary measures successfully employed in the past.

The situation at Rikers Island mirrors an “epidemic of violence” in big-city jails across the country, said Dr. James Gilligan, a clinical professor of psychiatry and co-author of a 2013 report that found the treatment of mentally ill individuals at Rikers Island violated the city’s mental health standards. He said an overreliance on solitary confinement and force at Rikers Island and elsewhere perpetuated violence, particularly among the mentally ill, who have crowded the nation’s correctional facilities as mental hospitals and other institutions have closed.

The proportion of people in prison with a diagnosed mental illness has grown to 40 percent, from 20 percent, over the last eight years, according to the Correction Department. These people are responsible for about two-thirds of infractions at city jails, the department said.

The New York Times reports that Attorney General Eric Holder has met with Senator Rand Paul and other Republicans to discuss eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. According to The Times, Mr. Paul is backing a sentencing overhaul bill, also supported by Mr. Holder and the Obama administration, that he predicts will pass the Senate with support from up to half of its Republicans.

In 2010, Congress unanimously voted to reduce the 100-to-1 disparity between sentences for crack cocaine offenses and those for powdered cocaine, a vestige of the crack epidemic. Now, the Obama administration and its allies in Congress are pushing to go even further. Mr. Holder wants to make people eligible for early release if they were sentenced under the now-abolished crack guidelines. And he wants judges to have more discretion when sentencing people on nonviolent drug offenses.

For Mr. Holder, addressing sentencing laws is central to a second-term agenda that also includes defending voting rights and same-sex marriage. Black Americans have disproportionately received lengthy prison terms and are extremely overrepresented in the inmate population.

Libertarian-minded Republicans see long prison sentences as an ineffective and expensive way to address crime.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced the launch of a college education program for people in 10 prison facilities in New York state. Offering both associate’s and bachelor’s degrees, the program will seek to reduce recidivism rates and the overall size of the prison population. The state’s current recidivism rate is 40% — compared to an existing New York college education program, the Bard Prison Initiative, which has a recidivism rate of 4%.

According to the New York Times, Attorney General Eric Holder has called for the repeal of laws restricting voting rights for millions of people with felony convictions. His remarks came at a speech on Tuesday at Georgetown University in which he “described today’s prohibitions — which in some cases bar those convicted from voting for life — as a vestige of the racist policies of the South after the Civil War, when states used the criminal justice system to keep blacks from fully participating in society.” African-Americans are disproportionately affected by conviction-related voting restrictions and represent over a third of the estimated 5.8 million people who are prohibited from voting.