Impact of the First Step Act
The First STEP Act was enacted on December 21st, 2018 by President Donald Trump. The Trump administration began working on the bill and after making some refinements and compromises, it passed through both the house and senate, becoming the first criminal justice reform bill passed in a decade. The bill has the goal of making the federal justice system fairer, reducing mass incarceration, and focusing more on rehabilitation. The act primarily focuses on sentencing reform by one shortening federal prison sentences, and two giving people a chance to avoid mandatory minimum penalties by expanding a safety valve that allows a judge to impose a sentence lower than the statutory minimum. For example, the act made the offender committing three strikes to mean a 25 year sentence rather than life in prison. The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 reduced the crack vs powder cocaine sentence length disparity going forward, but FSA expanded this for people already in prison as well. Those sentenced for crack cocaine offenses immediately became eligible to apply for a resentence for a shorter time. Since 2018, 3000 inmates have been released and 1700 people convicted of crack cocaine offenses have had their sentences shortened. The bill also focused on improving conditions in federal prisons and ending inhumane practices such as restraints on pregnant women and placing people in prisons closer to family.
Finally, the bill focuses a lot on providing rehabilitation to offenders, rather than solely punishment. The First Step Act calls for the Bureau of Prisons to expand recidivism reduction programs for all people in prison including vocational training, educational classes and medical treatment. Since the Act, 16,000 federal prisoners have enrolled in drug treatment programs. FSA also created a new risk assessment called PATTERN that determines how likely someone is to reoffend.Participation in these programs in addition to a good risk assessment result means that prisoners will be able to earn time credits they can put towards an early release.
However, it is not all good news, and more work is to be done. The implementation of the FSA was very slow due to covid and the act only authorized 75 million per year for the first five years in funding. To continue having an effect, much more funding is required. Additionally, the First step only covers the 180,000 federal inmate population and not the 1.3 million people in state prisons.