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This new legislation sends over 100,000 of these cases to civil court rather than criminal court, saving almost 10,000 people per year from having a permanent criminal record and avoiding over 50,000 warrants every year.
- Fixing A Broken System
- Relief from Harsh Sentences
- Toward A Better Prison System
- Funding Insecurity
- Undervaluing Rehabilitation and Entrenching Bias
The First Step Act is the product of years of advocacy by people across the political spectrum. Indeed, a very similar bipartisan bill nearly passed in 2015, but was dragged down by election-year politics. The Trump administration began working on its own criminal justice bill in early 2018, and an initial deal was catalyzed by a core group of bipa...
First, the good news. The First Step Act’s sentencing reforms are off to a strong start. Before 2010, an offense involving 5 grams of crack cocaine, a form of the drug more common in the Black community, was punished as severely as one involving 500 grams of powder. The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 changed that, reducing this 100:1 disparity to 18:1...
When it comes to improving programming within federal prison, even more work remains to be done. Federal prisons offer some opportunities for people in prison to participate in services that either address their individual needs, or help prepare them for life after release. Drug treatment and drug education are two examples; others include ESL and ...
Any expansion of programming also won’t be free. Knowing that, the First Step Act authorized $75 million per year for five years for implementation. But authorization is only the beginning of the budgeting process. Congress must also formally appropriate money to the BOP to fund the First Step Act for each year that it is authorized. Thankfully, in...
In late March, the Justice Department appeared to finally acknowledge the need to transfer people in federal prison to home confinement to keep them safe from the coronavirus. But transfers have been slow, and a recent report from ProPublicashows one reason why. The DOJ prioritized transfers for people deemed to pose a “minimum” risk of recidivism ...
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Jan 4, 2019 · The FIRST STEP Act marks progress for criminal justice reform, but it has some notable shortcomings. It will leave significant mandatory minimum sentences in place. In addition, two of the bill’s key sentencing provisions are not retroactive, which minimizes their overall impact.
The First Step Act, formally known as the Formerly Incarcerated Reenter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person Act, is a bipartisan criminal justice bill passed by the 115th U.S. Congress and signed by President Donald Trump in December 2018.
- Formerly Incarcerated Reenter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person Act
- the 115th United States Congress
- Formerly Incarcerated Reenter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person Act
Dec 9, 2020 · It is time for the federal government to lead on criminal justice reform. This document provides a blueprint for both Congress and the administration to initiate that transformative change.
Aug 22, 2023 · In 2018, Congress passed and then-President Donald Trump signed into law the bipartisan First Step Act, a sweeping criminal justice reform bill designed to promote rehabilitation, lower recidivism, and reduce excessive sentences in the federal prison system.
The act was the culmination of a bi-partisan effort to improve criminal justice outcomes, as well as to reduce the size of the federal prison population while also creating mechanisms to maintain public safety.
