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First Step Is One Of The Biggest Criminal Justice Reforms In Decades. But How Great Will Its Effect Be?

On Tuesday night, a Republican-dom­i­nat­ed Senate passed First Step, paving the way for the crim­i­nal jus­tice reform bill to clear the House and be signed into law by Donald Trump. The bipar­ti­san bill, which was over­whelm­ing­ly passed in an 87 – 12 vote, is wide­ly con­sid­ered to the most sub­stan­tial leg­is­la­tion affect­ing the fed­er­al prison sys­tem in decades.

As the New York Times reports, the leg­is­la­tion pack­ages togeth­er a num­ber of reforms aimed at reduc­ing recidi­vism and dra­con­ian sen­tences for peo­ple locked up in fed­er­al pris­ons.
Under the bill, thou­sands of fed­er­al inmates will be able to have their sen­tences reduced imme­di­ate­ly, and ear­ly-release pro­grams and job train­ing will be expand­ed. Mandatory min­i­mum sen­tences for non­vi­o­lent drug offend­ers would also be reduced, and judges will be giv­en more free­dom to go around manda­to­ry min­i­mums. The bill also ends the prac­tice of shack­ling preg­nant inmates in fed­er­al prison, as well as pro­hibits juve­nile soli­tary con­fine­ment in “almost all cas­es” accord­ing to the Times.

The new leg­is­la­tion has been in the works since Barack Obama was in office and has drawn a wide swath of sup­port from lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives. Kim Kardashian and Jared Kushner have pub­licly sup­port­ed the bill (with Kushner, in par­tic­u­lar, being cred­it­ed with orches­trat­ing Trump’s sup­port), as have the American Civil Liberties Union and a Koch broth­ers-backed group, Right on Crime.

Because race and America’s penal sys­tem are so deeply inter­twined, the First Step bill would the­o­ret­i­cal­ly have a dis­pro­por­tion­ate impact on com­mu­ni­ties of col­or. The Times not­ed that one pro­vi­sion of the bill could decrease the sen­tences of “sev­er­al thou­sand drug offend­ers serv­ing lengthy sen­tences for crack-cocaine offens­es.” During the “War on Drugs” era, black crack deal­ers were pun­ished far more heav­i­ly than white offend­ers deal­ing coke. Even a sen­a­tor like Ted “bury me under a que­so foun­tain” Cruz wasn’t afraid to put that at the fore­front in his com­ments last night.
Read more here ; https://​www​.the​root​.com/​f​i​r​s​t​-​s​t​e​p​-​i​s​-​o​n​e​-​o​f​-​t​h​e​-​b​i​g​g​e​s​t​-​c​r​i​m​i​n​a​l​-​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​-​r​e​f​o​r​-​1​8​3​1​2​1​4​003