In March, Sen. Chuck Grass­ley, the newly em­powered Sen­ate Ju­di­ciary Com­mit­tee chair­man, de­livered an im­pas­sioned speech from the floor on the dangers of the “le­ni­ency in­dus­tri­al com­plex.”

Ac­cord­ing to Grass­ley, there was a grow­ing mis­con­cep­tion out there that man­dat­ory min­im­ums for drug of­fend­ers needed to be re­duced.

“The ar­gu­ments for the Smarter Sen­ten­cing Act are merely a weak at­tempt to de­fend the in­defens­ible,” Grass­ley said of a pro­posed re­form bill. “What I have called the le­ni­ency in­dus­tri­al com­plex refers to the people who are sen­tenced to drug man­dat­ory-min­im­um sen­tences as ‘non­vi­ol­ent.’ ” He ar­gued that “any truly non­vi­ol­ent of­fend­ers would qual­i­fy” for a “safety valve” already avail­able in ex­ist­ing law.

Now, Grass­ley could be just days away from un­veil­ing a ma­jor bi­par­tis­an justice-re­form pack­age that would seek to re­duce re­cidiv­ism and give in­mates the chance to re­duce their sen­tences with good be­ha­vi­or. The bill also will of­fer changes to the way judges dole out man­dat­ory min­im­ums.

Grass­ley has moved on the is­sue of man­dat­ory min­im­ums. While a bi­par­tis­an group of sen­at­ors is still work­ing on the fi­nal bill, it’s clear that the Re­pub­lic­an from Iowa has come a long way.

“The points of ne­go­ti­ation are the ones you would ex­pect, about in what areas man­dat­ory min­im­ums should be ad­jus­ted and to where they should be ad­jus­ted,” says Demo­crat­ic Sen. Shel­don White­house, a key ne­go­ti­at­or for justice re­form in the Sen­ate.

Un­like four months ago, today it is un­der­stood that any justice-re­form pack­age will in­clude pro­vi­sions that give judges more flex­ib­il­ity on sen­ten­cing. Be­hind the scenes, Grass­ley has fought to en­sure that the pro­vi­sions in the bill are not just re­hashes of the Smarter Sen­ten­cing Act he was op­posed to, but changes in man­dat­ory min­im­ums are com­ing.

“It’s not as far as I would like, but we are get­ting some­where,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, a spon­sor of the Smarter Sen­ten­cing Act, told Na­tion­al Journ­al.

On man­dat­ory min­im­ums, Grass­ley in­sisted earli­er this year that sen­at­ors ne­go­ti­ate from scratch.

“It was a long pro­cess, and he came in in­sist­ing on a dif­fer­ent ap­proach and we said, ‘All right, let’s take your ap­proach and see how close we can come to our goal.’ And he has worked in good faith with us and we’re close,” says Minor­ity Whip Dick Durbin.

At this point, sen­at­ors on both sides of the aisle re­port ne­go­ti­ations are closer than they have ever been. Sen­at­ors have agreed that high-risk of­fend­ers, who are con­sidered dan­ger­ous either be­cause they de­ployed a weapon in a crime or have a his­tory of vi­ol­ence, won’t be eli­gible for the so-called safety valve. A nar­row sub­set of non­vi­ol­ent drug of­fend­ers will be.

“What we are try­ing to do is to make sure that those who are guilty of drug of­fenses do not have oth­er ag­grav­at­ing factors such as us­ing a gun, vi­ol­ence, or gang activ­ity. We are work­ing through the lan­guage very care­fully on that,” Durbin said. “How do we get the gang lead­ers and the brains of the gang sep­ar­ated from the rank and file?”

Many of the so-called back-end re­forms that fo­cus on giv­ing pris­on­ers a bet­ter chance of suc­cess after in­car­cer­a­tion are bor­rowed from Re­pub­lic­an Sen. John Cornyn and Sen. White­house’s Cor­rec­tions Act.

“We have al­ways un­der­stood our bill to be the vehicle to which oth­er less pop­u­lar pro­vi­sions “¦ would be ad­ded,” White­house says.

The pro­pos­als in the Cor­rec­tions Act fo­cus on giv­ing in­mates the op­por­tun­ity to get jobs and ex­hib­it a propensity for suc­cess. Some low-level of­fend­ers can even work their way up to qual­i­fy­ing to serve the fi­nal weeks and months of their sen­tence su­per­vised in the com­munity.

Even once the new bill is in­tro­duced, however, there will still be changes made to it. And any le­gis­la­tion that makes it to the floor of the U.S. Sen­ate will likely un­der­go a vig­or­ous amend­ment pro­cess.

Oth­er sen­at­ors who have worked on crim­in­al-justice re­form be­fore already see the up­com­ing le­gis­la­tion as an op­por­tun­ity to ad­vance their own causes.

Sen. Tim Scott, a Re­pub­lic­an from South Car­o­lina, has in­tro­duced a bill to grant loc­al law en­force­ment agen­cies $500,000,000 for body cam­er­as over a five-year peri­od. Scott says that arm­ing agen­cies with cam­er­as will help stem ten­sions between po­lice and the com­munit­ies they patrol.

The floor may be an­oth­er place for sen­at­ors to add more strin­gent re­duc­tions in man­dat­ory min­im­ums.

But those in the work­ing group say the bill still has more hurdles to over­come, even bey­ond con­vin­cing Grass­ley to put his name on any meas­ure over­haul­ing man­dat­ory min­im­ums.

“We are go­ing to have to have a good de­bate about it. It is im­port­ant and long over­due,” Cornyn says.