The First Step Act: One Year Later The First Step Act has a broad constituency of supporters that stretches from the White House to prison corridors. In commemoration of the sentencing reform law’s passage one year ago this week, The Sentencing Project has published, One Year After the First Step Act: Mixed Outcomes, an analysis of the law’s successes, challenges and the reform left undone. The First Step Act was enacted to limit mandatory minimums for low-level drug offenses, provide retroactive sentencing reductions to people imprisoned under the 100 to 1 crack cocaine disparity, and expand rehabilitation in federal prisons. While over 2,000 sentence reductions have been approved by judges, the Department of Justice has attempted to block hundreds of eligible beneficiaries. Other outcomes of the law’s implementation have also been mixed. The Sentencing Project urges lawmakers to harness the continuing bipartisan interest in criminal justice reform. Moving forward we need to advance systemic change to undue the harm caused by decades of mass incarceration fueled by mandatory minimums and federal prosecutors’ focus on extreme punishments for street-level crime. To learn more about The Sentencing Project’s support of First Step Act implementation or other federal policy priorities, contact Kara Gotsch, Director of Strategic Initiatives, [email protected]. | |
