I would expect a challenge to the inability to restore your rights under any circumstances once a federal PP before I expect to see any real reform in sentencing coming from the legislature.
That said, our penal system is cracking badly and our rate of incarceration (vs the population) is not only unsustainable, but its going to lead to social unrest soon enough and suspect it will couple with back-lash/insurgency from the "war on drugs" and the expansion of the Mexican cartels' influence on our side of the border.
I suspect it will require a significant re-think in this generation, if for no other reason than budgets, but the insurgency against the war-on-drugs conflating with the social un-rest from the rather alarming demographic realities of our penal system could produce profound changes here. As always, people will put up with crap for a lot longer than they should or anyone outside looking in thinks they will - until that day when they won't any more...
+1 IMO your second paragraph is spot-on.
Mark L.