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1 Ames C. Grawert & Patricia L. Richman, The First Step Act's Prison Reforms: Uneven Implementation and the Path Forward 1 (2022)

handle is hein.brennan/ftspacs0001 and id is 1 raw text is: The First Step Act's Prison Reforms Uneven Implementation and the Path Forward By Ames C. Grawert and Patricia L. Richman Three years ago, Congress passed the First Step Act, the first major federal criminal justice reform legislation in nearly a decade.1 The culmination of years of bipartisan advocacy, the law included both long-overdue changes to excessively punitive federal sentencing laws and reforms aimed at improving condi- tions in the federal prison system. This brief examines the structure of the First Step Act's prison reforms, how they have been implemented, and what more Congress and the Department of Justice (DOJ) must do to realize their potential. Background In the 1980s, Congress enacted rigid mandatory penalties, which require judges to impose minimum terms of incar- ceration for certain federal crimes or when certain statu- tory criteria are satisfied.2 Sometimes these penalties are triggered by specific conduct, such as possessing a firearm or possessing drugs above a specified threshold quantity.3 These laws significantly expanded the size of the federal prison system and led to an explosion in racial disparities in punishment, all without addressing drug use or improv- ing public safety.4 The federal prison system strained under the effects of these penalties, with lawmakers describing a state of crisis as the prison population climbed.5 Indeed, the federal prison population grew eightfold between the 1980s and the mid-2010s, outpacing growth in state-level incarceration, with weapon and drug offenses making up more than 60 percent of the growth in federal imprison- ment.6 Mechanisms for checking excessive custodial sentences did not keep pace. Compassionate release, for example, which allows a federal court to reduce or end a prison sentence for extraordinary and compelling circumstances, was severely underused.7 People in prison had limited opportunities to earn early release through their conduct; good time credits, earned for good behav- ior while incarcerated, amounted to at most 47 days per year of incarceration. Congress began to rectify this situation in 2010 with the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced the crack/powder cocaine sentencing ratio from 100:1 to 18:1 in drug traf- ficking cases and eliminated the five-year mandatory minimum for simple possession of crack.9 However, these changes applied only prospectively, meaning that people sentenced before the law went into effect remained in prison, serving the same wildly dispropor- tionate sentences that Congress had just repudiated. Additionally, the act did not address the long-standing consensus that federal prisons were failing to provide meaningful programming and rehabilitation to incarcer- ated people. Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law 1

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