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300 criminal justice reform supporters rallied at the Capitol Wednesday morning, hoping to convince lawmakers to get behind a bill that could reduce the amount of time prisoners are required to serve on their sentence.

Reformers announced if they can’t convince lawmakers, they have a back up plan.

Currently Florida prisoners are required to serve at least 85 percent of their sentence.

The reformers are supporting a bill that would drop it to 65 percent for those like former prisoner Laurette Philipsen.

“For someone like me who never got in trouble, followed the rules, this would have been a huge motivator,” said Pilipsen.

But the legislation, which reformers estimate could save the state $870 million over the next five years, is facing an uphill battle.

Representative James Grant, who chairs the bill’s first committee stop, worries about public safety.

“The notion that our prisons are full on nonviolent low level offenders is just devoid of reality,” said Grant.

But reform advocates like Amy McCourt, who was a recent victim of a violent home invasion, see it differently.

“The boys that came in my home that night are 21 and 22 years old and I just believe they can be rehabilitated,” said McCourt.

With the House refusing to hear the bill supporters are already looking ahead to the 2022 ballot.

Reforms said they’ve prepared language for a constitutional amendment.

“I believe that it will be just like Amendment 4. We’ll get five million folks who will be willing to vote to change what we’re doing in our [prisons], cause what we’re doing right now, we’re warehousing people and we cannot continue to do that,” said Rep. Dianne Hart, the House sponsor of the gain time bill.

Getting an amendment on the ballot would be no easy task.

They’d need at least 766,000 signatures, a goal made even more difficult by new restrictions on paid petition gatherers.

The langue of the House bill has been amendment onto a bill in the Senate, which has cleared one committee so far, but it hasn’t moved since early December.