More than 1,200 prisoners will be released into the Washington area if new sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine offenses are made retroactive, a proposal just pitched by the Justice Department. President Obama signed a law in August reducing the sentences for crack offenses, saying it remedied a “fundamentally unfair” disparity in which crack cocaine offenders received harsher penalties than other cocaine offenders.

On Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. urged the U.S. Sentencing Commission to make the law applicable to federal prisoners sentenced under the old guidelines. The change could mean the early release of more than 12,000 prisoners nationwide, shaving three years off the average sentence.