First Step, which earned support from Kamala Harris and Ted Cruz, expands rehabilitative opportunities for inmates

This article is more than 8 months old

This article is more than 8 months old

Donald Trump on Friday signed into law the First Step Act, a prison and sentencing reform bill with strong bipartisan support, having passed the Senate earlier this week and in the House yesterday.

Can Kushner's work on the criminal justice overhaul save his reputation? Read more

“The First Step Act will make communities SAFER and SAVE tremendous taxpayers dollars,” the president said in a statement. “It brings much-needed hope to many families during the holiday season.”

The result of coalition-building in a partisan political climate, First Step earned support from politicians as ideologically diverse as senators Kamala Harris and Ted Cruz, and from advocacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Fraternal Order of Police.

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Trump’s strong support was largely seen as a result of the involvement of his son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner. At the signing ceremony, he thanked Kushner personally.

Of prisoners who could not advocate for themselves from behind bars, Kushner said: “We were their lobbyists.”



The act expands rehabilitative opportunities, increases “good time”-served credits for most federal prisoners, reduces mandatory minimum sentences for a number of drug-related crimes and formally bans some correctional practices including the shackling of pregnant women.

“This bill could have died a dozen different deaths,” said Van Jones, co-founder of advocacy group #cut50, which was integral in the bill’s design. “But the broad coalition that came together to pass it refused to give up.

Jones, a frequent outspoken critic of Trump on his CNN show, added: “Many have seen their loved ones sent to prison or were incarcerated themselves. For all of us, this fight was deeply personal.”

Early critics of the bill, such as New Jersey senator Corey Booker and the ACLU, who felt that the legislation did not go far enough, came around in large part due to major additions to the House version of the bill by the Senate, which added language on sentencing reform. The first House version only contained reforms on the way inmates are treated in prison.

In exchange, progressive reformers had to accept a number of changes to which prisoners will be eligible for benefits under the act, based on the crime for which they were convicted. The sentencing reforms were also mostly not made retroactive, meaning they do not apply to inmates already sentenced.

“The First Step Act is by no means perfect,” said Jesselyn McCurdy, deputy director of the Washington legislative office at the ACLU. “But we are in the midst of a mass incarceration crisis, and the time to act is now.

“We applaud the bipartisan group of senators who were willing to listen to advocates.”</s>Sens. Chris Coons and Tom Carper recently celebrated the passage of The First Step Act — bipartisan legislation in the Senate to reduce recidivism, improve fairness and promote safety in the criminal justice system.

The revised First Step Act has been endorsed by President Donald Trump and was cosponsored by more than a third of the Senate.

“The American criminal justice system is broken, and it has been for a long time. The mass incarceration explosion resulting from the ‘War on Drugs’ and ‘tough on crime’ policies of the last four decades has left us with prisons that are overcrowded and costly and inmates that are often unfairly sentenced and forgotten. For decades, our system has focused too much on criminalization and incarceration and too little on justice and rehabilitation,” said Coons. “I was proud to partner with my colleagues to craft legislation that would make the criminal justice system fairer, and I look forward to seeing President Trump sign the First Step Act into law.”

“The U.S. has one of the highest incarceration rates in the entire world. While our country makes up only five percent of the world’s population, it incarcerates more than 20 percent of the world’s prisoners,” said Carper. “We should not be aiming to win any records for how many individuals we are incarcerating; instead, we should be working to ensure that those who serve their time are re-entering our society as better people, not better criminals. Despite the over $80 billion that our country spends on incarceration every year, our criminal justice system continues to face problems with overcrowding, inmate violence and high recidivism rates. The First Step Act puts long-awaited common-sense reforms into our federal prison system to address these problems while critically providing equal justice under the law. Today’s vote may be overdue, but I am pleased that we were finally able to seize the day and pass this legislation with overwhelming bipartisan support. I would urge the House to take this measure up quickly so that the President can sign it into law.”

The comprehensive, revised First Step Act aims to reduce crime by helping low-risk inmates prepare to successfully rejoin society through participation in proven recidivism reduction and professional development programs. It also improves fairness in prison sentences by recalibrating certain mandatory minimum sentences, granting greater discretion for judges in sentencing of low-level, nonviolent drug crimes and clarifying congressional intent on sentencing enhancements for certain crimes involving firearms. The legislation also allows petitions for retroactive application of the Fair Sentencing Act to be considered on an individual basis to reduce sentence disparities between crack and powder cocaine offenses.</s>With U.S. President Donald Trump’s signing of criminal-justice reform legislation just hours before Congress officially started its holiday break—he achieved a rare bipartisan legislative victory.

The legislation overwhelmingly passed in the Senate.

The First Step Act would lower the number of inmates in federal prisons, allow judges more options in sentencing convicts for nonviolent crimes, including drug offenses, and increase rehabilitation programs for those released.

Even though Jewish inmates comprise a very small portion of the American prison population, some Jewish groups and activists have been working for years on such reform. Many have also credited Trump’s Jewish son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner for spearheading the current legislation.

Marc Levin, vice president of criminal-justice policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told JNS that although “there is nothing in the bill concerning hate crimes,” the American Jewish community stands to benefit from it.

“Many provisions, such as ensuring that prisoners are housed within 500 miles of their families, will benefit prisoners and families of all faiths, including those who are Jewish,” he said.

The legislation would only affect federal inmates—some 180,789 Jews out of the 2.1 million prisoners nationwide. According to the Aleph Institute, which is working with the Texas Public Policy Foundation to advocate for criminal-justice reform, Jews make up less than 1 percent of overall U.S. inmate population.

Rabbi Menachem Katz, the Aleph Institute’s director of prison and military outreach, told JNS that the organization “applauds” the passage of the Senate version in that it will help Jewish inmates “reintegrate into society.”

He declined to comment whether or not the Surfside, Fla.-based nonprofit—which is, according to its mission statement, “dedicated to assisting and caring for the well-being of members of specific populations that are isolated from the regular community”—has lobbied Congress on this effort.

While Katz said the act is “not a Jewish bill,” the Aleph Institute has been motivated to advocate for the sweeping overhaul by Jewish values, such as “Love your fellow Jew,” and that the Torah does not consist of the concept of prisons because people should be able to help those who do wrong become productive members of society.

Can the new legislation help Pollard?

Another group supporting the First Step Act is the National Council of Young Israel.

“With over 2,000,000 people in American prisons, including 181,000 in federal penitentiaries, we cannot ignore the need for sensible criminal-justice reforms that aim to lower the recidivism rate, and seek to ensure a smooth and successful re-entry into society for non-violent offenders upon their release,” said NCYI President Farley Weiss.

“The notion of giving people second chances has a strong basis in Judaism; the concept of teshuvah and enabling people to repent for their wrongdoings plays a central role in our faith,” he continued. “President Trump took a step in the right direction on this issue and demonstrated his commitment to blazing a path to reintegration for those who seek it.”

Weiss added that, in light of this effort, Trump should also ease the parole restrictions of Jonathan Pollard, a former intelligence analyst who served three decades in prison for spying for and giving classified information to Israel.

Pollard’s conditions under the U.S. Parole Commission, since being released in 2015, include remaining in New York City for at least five years unless granted permission to travel outside. The president considered allowing Pollard to attend the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, but that did not materialize, although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly raised Pollard’s case in his meeting with Trump.

Liberal Jewish groups have also been advocating for criminal-justice reform. The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism has been outspoken on the issue for some time.

Earlier this year, the House passed its own version of the First Step Act, which was much more limited in reform than the recent Senate version. Liberal Jewish groups strongly criticized that version.

“We are deeply disappointed by the House of Representatives’ pursuit of the misguided First Step Act,” the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism said at the time. “The Reform Jewish movement, united with our partners and allies in the civil-rights community, firmly believes that sentencing reform must be included in any effective attempt to reform our criminal-justice system.”

Similarly, other progressive groups criticized the earlier House version.

Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights are among groups that signed a joint letter opposing the House version.

Thus far, liberal Jewish groups have not taken a stance on the new law.

At the signing in the Oval Office, one of the people standing near the president mentioned that Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel was “fond of saying that ‘the miracle of life was not just in its beginning, but the capacity to begin again.’ ”</s>(Screenshot: YouTube/The White House)U.S. President Donald Trump announcing his support for the FIRST STEP Act on prison reform in Washington D.C. on November 14, 2018.

The U.S. Senate voted 87-12 to pass the First Step Act, a major prison reform bill, which has received evangelical support but also some Christian opposition.

Russell D. Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, tweeted his thanks to the Senate for the vote on Tuesday.

"The #FirstStepAct has been a long time in the making, and it is a good and needed development," Moore wrote.

The ERLC added in a tweet of its own that "this criminal justice reform bill has been a key part of our legislative agenda and we are thankful for the broad coalition that led to this victory!"

Prison Fellowship, America's largest outreach to prisoners, and one of the biggest Christian ministries to push for the bill, applauded the Senate for passing the First Step Act.

"This legislation will help reduce recidivism by preparing men and women to fulfill their God-given potential through restorative programming, including improved substance-abuse treatment programs, life-skills classes, and vocational training — building job readiness to fuel local economies. This is about getting smart on crime by giving men and women, made in the image of God, the tools to change their lives," saidJames Ackerman, president and chief executive officer of Prison Fellowship.

Craig DeRoche, senior vice president of advocacy and public policy, added: "Today, the Senate refused to double down on the failed policies of the past. The FIRST STEP Act's passage reflects America's growing demand for smarter and more restorative solutions to crime."

The bill includes efforts to reduce the federal recidivism rate, and offers time credit incentives for federal inmates to participate in rehabilitative and vocational training programs.

Among the other notable provisions, it reduces the second strike mandatory minimum of 20 years to 15 years, while the 3rd strike goes down from a mandatory minimum of life in prison to 25 years.

"This bill in its entirety has been endorsed by the political spectrum of America," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill, one of the legislation's main backers.

"I can't remember any bill that has this kind of support, left and right, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican," he added, according to ABC News.

The New York Times pointed out that one of the major effects will be that thousands of inmates will become eligible for immediate sentencing reductions, while thousands of new offenders will receive reduced sentences.

"We're not just talking about money. We're talking about human potential," Senator John Cornyn, R-Tex., said on Tuesday.

"We're investing in the men and women who want to turn their lives around once they're released from prison, and we're investing in so doing in stronger and more viable communities."

Despite the strong bipartisan backing and evangelical support, more liberal Christian bodies, such as the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, which includes various mainline Protestant denominations, had argued that the changes do not go far enough.

"The United States is home to 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's prison population. The current mass incarceration crisis was birthed out of racist intentions, and we must be just as intentional about addressing the embedded racism if we are to have any meaningful reform. This bill does not move us any closer to justice on either issue," the NCC had argued earlier in December.

One proposal in the bill that the NCC strongly opposed was the use of electronic monitoring as a form of surveillance for released prisoners.

President Donald Trump meanwhile took to Twitter to explain his support for the First Step Act, which he backed in November.

"America is the greatest Country in the world and my job is to fight for ALL citizens, even those who have made mistakes. Congratulations to the Senate on the bi-partisan passing of a historic Criminal Justice Reform Bill," Trump tweeted on Tuesday.

Read more about the prison reform bill on The Christian Post.</s>WASHINGTON — With a government shutdown just hours away, President Donald Trump on Friday signed rare bipartisan legislation addressing concerns with the criminal justice system.

President Trump called the bill “an incredible success for our country” and “beyond bipartisan” during an Oval Office signing ceremony.

Lawmakers and advocates also hailed it as a hugely influential package and thanked the president for supporting the issue.

The legislation will give judges more discretion when sentencing some drug offenders and will boost prisoner rehabilitation efforts, among other efforts.

It received the rare support of both Democratic and Republican lawmakers as well as conservative and liberal groups that rarely work together.

Playing a key role behind the scenes was President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, whose father spent time in federal prison when he was younger.</s>After the US Senate overwhelmingly voted on Tuesday to reform certain parts of the criminal-justice system, a move lauded as a remarkable bipartisan victory under the Trump administration, even its supporters are warning that the legislation will ultimately be toothless if it's not followed up with stronger reforms.

The passage of the bill, known as the First Step Act, marked the first major legislative win in decades to address mass incarceration at the federal level.

The bill overhauls certain federal sentencing laws, reducing mandatory minimum sentences for drug felonies and expanding early-release programs. In a major win for prison-reform groups, the bill also makes retroactive a 2010 federal sentencing law reducing the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses.

The bill also aims to lower recidivism by offering more rehabilitation and job-training opportunities, and it includes provisions intended to treat prisoners humanely — banning the shackling of pregnant inmates, halting the use of solitary confinement for most juvenile inmates, and mandating that prisoners be placed in facilities within 500 miles from their families.

But even the advocates and lawmakers who pushed the bill forward are urging caution in celebrating too soon. Sen. Kamala Harris, a California Democrat, tweeted at length about the shortcomings of the bill on Monday before saying she ultimately decided to vote for it.

Read more: Prison reform legislation is moving through Congress with the help of an unlikely alliance: Trump and the ACLU. Here's what it would do.

She criticized the legislation for not applying all of the sentencing reforms retroactively, not going far enough in applying earned good-time credits, failing to crack down on the private-prison industry, and not reining in the use of electronic monitoring.

"To be clear, the FIRST STEP Act is very much just that — a first step," she said. "It is a compromise of a compromise, and we ultimately need to make far greater reforms if we are to right the wrongs that exist in our criminal justice system."

And though most of the major criminal-justice-reform advocacy groups supported the bill — including the American Civil Liberties Union — some shied away entirely.

The National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, an organization representing dozens of Protestant denominations, criticized the bill for relying too heavily on electronic monitoring to surveil released prisoners and for failing to make its mandatory minimum sentencing reforms retroactive, a key provision that law-enforcement groups had demanded before pledging their support.

"Despite current bipartisan enthusiasm for any move toward criminal justice reform, the First Step Act is insufficient toward that end," Rev. Steven Martin said in a statement. "While compromise is a necessary part of consensus-building around legislation, this bill will have harmful consequences, which will be more difficult to correct later."

Meanwhile among conservatives, the strongest opposition from the right came from Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, who assailed the bill as "misguided and dangerous" in a recent National Review op-ed and criticized his conservative colleagues in the Senate for their support.

"The First Step Act provides hundreds of new rights and privileges to federal prisoners. More phone time, reduced sentences, 'compassionate release,' and early release credits," he tweeted. "There is not a single benefit in the bill for the victims of these criminals."

Cotton and Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana proposed three major amendments that were widely criticized for exempting broad swaths of prisoners from the bill's early-release provisions, effectively defanging much of the bill's benefits for prisoners.

Liberal groups criticized the amendments; #cut50, an initiative to reduce the prison population, called the amendments "attempts to derail a bill that prioritizes public safety and rehabilitation." All three amendments were resoundingly struck down.

"The bipartisan coalition stuck together and won. Tom Cotton's scare tactics were a resounding failure," Jessica Jackson Sloan, national director of #cut50, said in a statement. "The overwhelming rejection of his amendments shows a clear mandate for federal criminal justice reforms."

The bill is expected to pass the House of Representatives and move on to the White House, where President Donald Trump has vowed to sign it.</s>WASHINGTON — It seems like an unbelievable story.

For years, a bipartisan coalition of religious leaders, scholars and activists have argued the criminal justice system puts far too many behind bars and unfairly targets black men. The coalition urged the Obama administration to adopt their recommendations for reform.

Yet Obama left office without passing legislation on criminal justice reform. Instead, President Donald Trump — known for his harsh and often racially tinged tough-on-crime rhetoric — is poised to make criminal justice reform a reality.

After being passed in the Senate on Tuesday night, a broad criminal justice reform package is expected to pass the House on Thursday before it heads to the president’s desk to be signed into law.

And the rare bipartisan consensus came directly as a result of White House involvement.

This account of how criminal justice reform came to pass is based on interviews with activists, White House and congressional aides, some of whom requested anonymity to speak more freely.

Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, a longtime criminal justice reform advocate, put it this way: “A breakthrough I’d never expect — the election of Donald Trump as president. What does that have to do with this? He brought his son-in-law to town.”

Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, made criminal justice reform a priority, having seen the federal prison system firsthand after his father, real estate developer Charles Kushner, spent 14 months behind bars for tax evasion and illegal campaign contributions. But the president's adviser wasn’t ready to agree to what longtime advocates were proposing.

The coalition had long pushed for reforms that would include: changes to mandatory minimum sentences, releasing people who served disproportionately harsh sentences for non-violent drug offenses, efforts to reduce recidivism and further reduce the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine.

Kushner argued strongly that such a comprehensive approach was likely not on the table. Trump wasn’t firmly rooted in the issue and his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had a long history of opposing such efforts.

Instead, Kushner pressed for a narrower bill that would prioritize prison reform, specifically making education and mental health support more available to inmates to help prepare them for their release. Sentencing reforms, particularly flexibility for non-violent drug offenders, were likely too controversial and a bridge too far, Kushner said, according to sources.

Even with slimmed down goals, the president was still an obstacle.

Last January, Trump held a meeting on prison reform in the Roosevelt Room with advocates, who saw it as their last chance to get the president on board.

As they presented their statistics, facts and arguments in favor of making changes to the system, the president seemed to lose interest.

So Reed Cordish, then an aide to Kushner, interrupted the conversation.

"Mr. President, one of the most powerful things about your campaign and your message as president is you fight for the forgotten men and women, and there’s no one more forgotten than these people,” Cordish said, referring prison inmates.

Trump briefly stared at Cordish. "You're right," he said, according to two people in the room.

A few days later, at a congressional Republican retreat, Trump told lawmakers he believed prison reform was a critical issue that they needed to pass. It was then, advocates said, that they knew the legislation had a chance.

Four months later in April, the House brought up a narrow prison reform bill that Trump had indicated he’d support but did not include sentencing reform. Republicans worried sentencing reform would scare off too many GOP colleagues, while a senior White House aide said it had purposely been made more narrow to keep Sessions from killing it. Session left the administration last month.

The bill got an important lift when New York Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries signed on as a co-sponsor, despite opposition from most Democrats wary of giving Trump a victory and who thought the legislation didn't go far enough.

Jeffries, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus long considered a rising star in the Democratic party, believed that a small advancement would be better than no advancement. He called the bill the First Step Act for that reason.

Facing pushback from liberals who argued the bill was too narrow, Jeffries released a seven-page memo countering their arguments, according to a person familiar with the situation. That memo was instrumental in keeping fellow Democrats and liberal groups from sabotaging the effort. Then Jeffries and Van Jones, of the advocacy group #Cut50, worked furiously to convince Democrats to support the measure.

“Elitists will say we should have held out for a perfect bill. While sitting in their ivory table with their degrees, they will judge when these people who have paid their dues should be able to go home to their families?” a Democratic aide said. “We did the right thing. We don’t care who the president is or who gets the credit. This was the right thing to do.”

Meanwhile, Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, Jeffries’ GOP cosponsor, was able win the support of nearly every Republican in the House specifically by keeping out sentencing reform.

"It was a matter of saying, ‘Here's the issues we’re not going to be dealing with, which is some of the more controversial and expansive sentencing reforms," Collins told NBC News.

The bill ended up passing the House 360-59 in May. The overwhelming vote was noteworthy, convincing advocates the legislation might have a chance of becoming law after all.

"That’s a vote number can’t be ignored. I then thought it had a chance in the Senate,” said Mark Holden, vice president of Koch Industries and board member of the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity. The group has been part of the bipartisan reform coalition since discussions began in the Obama administration.

But the House bill still faced uncertainty in the Senate. Reform advocates of both parties who had been working on the issue for years wanted to add back the sentencing reforms that had scared off lawmakers in the House — including easing mandatory minimum sentencing rules that forced judges to give low-level drug offenders decades in prison. They also wanted to reduce and make retroactive sentences for crack-cocaine possession, as many inmates serve sentences 100 times longer than those convicted of powder cocaine offenses.

At this point, Trump still wasn’t on board with sentencing reforms.

Enter Kim Kardashian West, who may have single-handedly changed the president’s mind.

West met with Trump at the White House in September to urge him to pardon Alice Marie Johnson, a grandmother who had received a life sentence in 1996 for a non-violent, first time drug offense. A week later, Trump commuted Johnson’s sentence, and she walked out of prison after 21 years.

Still, the First Step Act languished in the Senate. Lawmakers including Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chair of the Judiciary Committee, and Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, argued the House version was too weak. They wanted sentencing reform, too.

Shortly after the midterms, Grassley and Durbin announced a deal with the White House to attach sentencing reform to the House bill, a more comprehensive effort than anyone thought could get through Congress or win the support of the president.

Then Trump held an event in November publicly supporting the newly crafted legislation. The Fraternal Order of Police also came out in support, giving the measure major momentum.

On the other side of the issue sat Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, a longtime opponent of almost any criminal justice legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had refused to bring any criminal justice reform bill for a vote before the midterms, believing it would be too difficult a campaign issue for his members.

Kushner had pressed McConnell to "jam this in" before the midterms, a White House official said, but McConnell asked Kushner to let it go until after the election. In return, the aide said, McConnell promised to whip the vote.

McConnell told Kushner to “finalize your language, shore up support,” the official added. The Senate majority leader told Republican supporters in the Senate that he would only bring the bill to the floor if they could deliver at least 65 votes.

Still, McConnell refused to prioritize the legislation, pointing instead to other priorities, including judicial nominations and funding the government.

Advocates insisted they had counted at least 70 votes in the Senate, but McConnell still refused to budge. Meanwhile, a leading law enforcement group, the National Sheriff's Association, was quietly working against the measure.

So Trump began tweeting, pressuring McConnell to bring it to the floor.

Both sides continued to massage the bill to enhance support, which was enough to convince more Republicans to sign on, including Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Steve Daines of Montana and David Perdue of Georgia.

At the same time, negotiations to fund the government were stalled and Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake put a hold on all judicial nominations until he was given a vote on a bill to protect the special counsel. That left open more time on the Senate floor, making it difficult for McConnell to continue blocking the vote.

Ultimately, it passed by a margin of 87-12 on Tuesday night.

“This might be my proudest moment in eight years in the United States Senate,” Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee said. “This bill died a thousand deaths just in the last few months alone. So even though the ultimate vote was overwhelming and supported, there were a thousand times when we had to rescue it from the fire so that makes it super gratifying.”

Grassley summed up the process to passage by referring to his fellow senators as marshmallows.

"How do you eat 10,000 marshmallows? One at a time," he said.</s>The “permanent campaign” made some Republicans fear being cast as soft on crime.

Though it’s a fairly modest measure with exceedingly broad support, the criminal-justice bill passed by the Senate on Tuesday evening barely made it out alive. Its near-demise illustrates how extreme partisanship and the permanent campaign have made reform legislation require a perfect storm in Washington. “It has died a thousand times and had life breathed back into it a thousand and one times,” said Brett Tolman, a Republican who was Utah’s top federal prosecutor in the late 2000s but has advocated for many of the bill’s changes since 2010. When it was finally called up, the First Step Act sailed through the Senate, with 87 senators in favor and just 12 Republicans opposed. The bill would trim mandatory minimum sentences and expand credit for inmates who participate in programs meant to prepare them for life after prison. It prohibits the shackling of female inmates during childbirth and bans virtually all solitary confinement for juveniles.

Federal inmates participating in “evidence-based recidivism-reduction programs” would be able to earn credit to leave prison more quickly, and the sentencing reforms would trim future mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes and let prisoners sentenced under the old crack-cocaine rules petition for a reduced sentence in line with the recent reforms. It would also allow some inmates to serve their sentences under house arrest or in halfway houses, and those incarcerated would be sent to prisons within 500 miles of their families. A House vote is expected Thursday, and President Donald Trump tweeted that he was looking forward to signing the legislation, which he said would “keep our communities safer, and provide hope and a second chance, to those who earn it. In addition to everything else, billions of dollars will be saved.” “It’s the most sweeping reform in a generation,” said Kevin Ring, president of the advocacy group Families Against Mandatory Minimums. “It’s also very modest … If people think we are even close to scratching the surface of the inequities in the federal criminal-justice system, they’re kidding themselves.” The bill, in fact, would affect only the federal prison population of about 180,000, which accounts for less than one-tenth of the more than 2 million inmates nationwide, a sum that makes the United States the world leader in incarceration rates. And as recently as a week and a half ago, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was saying there wasn’t enough time to consider the bill, which was “extremely divisive inside the Senate Republican conference.”

Many elements of the First Step Act floated around Capitol Hill for the past decade as concern grew on both the left and the right about the personal and fiscal costs of mass incarceration, a legacy of the war on drugs and the lock-’em-up approach of the 1970s and 1980s. In 2010, Congress passed a bipartisan law reducing the crack-cocaine sentencing disparity that disproportionately affected African Americans, but further legislative reforms sputtered after that, leading Barack Obama to use his commutation power broadly in the last years of his presidency. Cities are changing fast. Keep up with the CityLab Daily newsletter. The best way to follow issues you care about. The first condition for this week’s vote was one-party control of the federal government, which facilitates cooperation among the president and the chambers of Congress. Parties don’t want a president from the other side of the aisle to claim credit, and base voters punish incumbents seen as too conciliatory. Congressional leaders will do more to help a president of their own party. That’s why unified control of government now seems a prerequisite for substantive change; Obamacare was passed without a single Republican vote, and last year’s tax cuts were enacted without any Democratic support. Once the GOP reclaimed the House in 2011, Obama’s legislative agenda nearly ground to a halt. Next month, Trump will see the end of his unified-government honeymoon. Efforts to pass legislation similar to this year’s bill died in 2015 without a vote in the Senate, partly because McConnell did not want to give President Obama a legislative victory. This year, advocates had to overcome some Democratic resistance to giving President Trump a bipartisan win. “They were able to look past giving Trump a victory,” Tolman said. “They rolled up their sleeves and dug in.” The bill’s passage also depended on timing, in at least two ways. First, if the First Step Act had not passed in this brief lame-duck session, advocates expected their window of opportunity to close. “Saying that we’ll do it next year is tantamount to saying this just isn’t going to get done,” Senator Mike Lee, the libertarian-leaning Utah Republican, told The Wall Street Journal last month. A Democratic House majority might have demanded more than Trump was willing to accept, leading Republicans to withdraw their support, and the new Senate would have been slightly less favorable.

The lame-duck session also offered the best chance to get Republicans to support criminal-justice reform that primary opponents could use to tar incumbents as “soft on crime.” Members of Congress may have always resisted risky votes close to an election, but the inexorable creep of the permanent campaign has broadened the definition of “close to an election” to cover more and more of the 24 months between balloting. Rank-and-file members ask the leadership to shield them from votes likely to encourage a primary challenger or demotivate their core supporters, as some Republicans had been pressuring McConnell to kill the bill. It used to be that odd-numbered years offered the best chance for significant legislation, while campaigns dominated election years; now the time for ambition may be the few weeks immediately after elections, when voters are paying the least attention and politicians have the longest amount of time possible to let unpopular votes fade into the past.

Trump’s support gave the bill the boost it needed to get back on track after McConnell’s dilatory tactics. The “Nixon to China” factor comes into play whenever a president with a strong reputation on one side of an issue oversees a policy shift in the opposite direction. Nixon was known as a hawk who was tough on communism, so he had the credibility to build a relationship with China’s communist leaders. Trump had spent the fall blasting Democrats as soft on crime (as well as immigration, trade, and a litany of other issues), but soon after last month’s midterm elections, he announced his endorsement of the prison-reform measure. “Trump wasn’t a leader in the last couple of years, but in the last couple of months it did help,” said Marc Mauer, director of the advocacy group the Sentencing Project. Tolman, the former prosecutor, said the president’s backing helped persuade more Republicans to support the First Step Act, since GOP primary opponents will now have a harder time casting supporters as bleeding hearts. Trump tweeted his desire for McConnell to bring the bill to the floor. Finally, there was the Jared factor: The real Trump-administration power behind the bill came from Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who made prison reform a priority after seeing his developer father as a federal inmate for tax evasion and illegal campaign contributions. The pressure, along with increasing support among GOP senators, helped persuade McConnell to reverse course and schedule a vote. The First Step Act does mark a significant bipartisan accomplishment, but it came together only amid a rare alignment of conditions, structural and political. It’s likely to remain the exception to the rule of partisan gridlock. The forecast doesn’t call for another perfect storm anytime soon. This article originally appeared in The Atlantic.</s>A major criminal justice reform bill is poised to become law after the House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted in its favor Thursday. The First Step Act, passed in the Senate earlier this week with an 87-12 vote, would roll back sentences for federal prisoners, including mandatory life terms for third-time offenders and mandatory sentences for nonviolent drug users. The bill is now heading to the desk of President Trump, who has pledged to sign it into law. The bill only affects federal prisoners, who make up less than 10 percent of the more than 2 million prisoners. It has been endorsed by a wide range of supporters across the political spectrum, from the American Civil Liberties Union to the conservative Koch brothers. But the bill explicitly excludes immigrants and has been criticized by groups such as the Movement for Black Lives, a coalition of more than 150 black-led organizations, for encouraging profiteering and making “false promises” about bringing black prisoners home. We speak with Van Jones, president and co-founder of #cut50, a national bipartisan initiative to reduce the ’s incarcerated population by 50 percent over the next 10 years. We also speak with Jessica Jackson Sloan, a human rights attorney and co-founder and national director of #cut50.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, as we turn to look at a major criminal justice reform bill that may soon become law, after the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted in its favor Thursday. It’s called the FIRSTSTEP Act. The bipartisan measure, which passed in the Senate earlier this week with an unheard-of 87-to-12 vote, would roll back sentences for federal prisoners, including mandatory life terms for third-time offenders, as well as mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug users and those convicted of firearm crimes. The bill is now heading to the desk of President Trump, who has pledged to sign it into law, perhaps today.

The bill only affects federal prisoners, who make up less than 10 percent of the more than 2 million US prisoners. The US has the largest prison population in the world. The FIRST STEP Act ends sentencing disparities for convictions of crack cocaine versus powder cocaine, a distinction that’s long led to deep racial disparities in prison terms.

This is Democratic Senator Dick Durbin speaking shortly after the Senate vote.

AMY GOODMAN: The bill has been endorsed by a wide range of supporters across the political spectrum, from the American Civil Liberties Union to the conservative Koch brothers. It’s also a major priority of senior White House adviser, presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose father spent time in a federal prison for tax evasion and other charges.

For more, we go to Washington, DC, where we’re joined by Van Jones, president and co-founder of #cut50, a national bipartisan initiative to reduce the US incarcerated population by half over the next 10 years. Van Jones was President Barack Obama’s green jobs adviser in 2009, founded Green for All, also a CNNpolitical commentator. And also with us, Jessica Jackson Sloan, human rights attorney, co-founder and national director of #cut50.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Van, let’s begin with you. How did this happen? Do you think it will be signed today? What is most significant? What are you most proud of with this prison reform bill?

VAN JONES: I believe it will be signed today.

Here’s what happened. Formerly incarcerated people, directly impacted family members said, “We are not going to let the Trump administration go on criminal justice reform the way they went on immigration and on guns and on climate and every other issue, and poison the well. We are going to insist that the momentum that was developed under President Obama carry forward.” And those groups, mainly led by #cut50, found an ally in Jared Kushner, whose, again, father went to prison and who wanted to make a difference.

And it was the most remarkable thing to see Trump, who came into office talking about law and order and embracing the Blue Lives Matter movement and talking about American carnage and putting Jeff Sessions in place — really moving in a very negative direction — over the past year begin to turn. Kim Kardashian went in there and got him to release Ms. Alice Johnson. He began to add to his speeches some of the things he was hearing from formerly incarcerated people and from Jared.

And we ultimately were able to build, I think, the biggest bipartisan movement in the country, and got 87 senators to vote with us earlier this week. You can’t get 87 senators to vote together to change the name of a post office anymore. But on this issue, we finally had a breakthrough.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to go to the woman you just referred to, Alice Marie Johnson. Earlier this year, President Trump commuted her life sentence — she was imprisoned for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense — after her cause was taken up by the reality television star Kim Kardashian West. Alice Marie Johnson, 63-year-old grandmother from Memphis, released Wednesday from federal prison — released a while ago from federal prison in Aliceville, Alabama, where she had been serving her sentence for nearly 22 years. This is Johnson speaking after her release.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Alice Marie Johnson speaking while she was still jailed. But she is free. Earlier this year, Kim Kardashian West spoke to Mic about her meeting with Donald Trump on behalf of Alice Marie Johnson.

AMY GOODMAN: So, yes, that’s Kim Kardashian. She met with the president, and Alice Marie Johnson was freed a few months ago. Jessica Jackson Sloan, talk about the significance of this moment and then how you overcame the opposition of so many Republicans, like Tom Cotton, for example, from Arkansas and others. I mean, 87 to 12.

JESSICA JACKSON SLOAN: Yeah. Yeah, no, this is a historic moment. This is a moment where you not only have Republicans and Democrats coming together, you’ve got people from all across the country. Like Van said, the formerly incarcerated leaders, who said, “Enough is enough. We’re not going to tell our people inside that they’ve got to wait another four years before they can get any kind of relief. We’re going to keep fighting.” They stepped up. They organized in their states. You’ve got media from all over the country, everything from the Lexington Courier to The New York Times, saying this is one of the most significant criminal justice reforms and that Trump needed to get this done and Congress needed to get this done. You’ve got the National Association of Manufacturers. You’ve got Verizon. You’ve got the US Chambers Association.

JESSICA JACKSON SLOAN: Fox News broadcasting — all coming together, saying, you know, “We’ve got to get this done.” So I think, while this is an epic reform for all the reasons you laid out in the beginning, I also think this is a huge moment in the narrative around criminal justice reform. For decades, we’ve been hearing this Willie Horton narrative: “Don’t let people out, or they’re going to end up reoffending, and there’s going to be victims, and you’ll never be elected again.” Ms. Alice and this FIRST STEP Act are the antidote to the Willie Horton narrative. This is a turning point for the entire movement in the entire country.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you could tell us, Jessica, your own story, how you got involved, your own husband in prison?

JESSICA JACKSON SLOAN: Yes. When I was 22 years old, I had nothing but a GEDand a 2-month-old daughter. I found myself standing in a courtroom in Georgia watching as my husband got sentenced to 15, serve six. This was — in my mind at the time, I thought it was a fluke. I knew he was a great dad. I knew he was a great husband. I knew he was a boss to 17 people, and he showed up for work every morning on time. I knew what a great guy he was. And to watch the system just take all that away, and watch us go into financial ruin and my daughter grow up without her dad there, just because he had a drug addiction, and then watch, you know, as he stayed through the system not getting any help, that’s what motivated me to get involved. And I think those personal experiences are what have motivated everybody, from Jared Kushner to Shon Hopwood to many of these advocates, who have been out there fighting for this bill and saying it’s time to get some relief.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Van, if you could talk about — well, I mean, some might say perhaps this was passed by many Republicans because so many Republicans are facing prison right now, around the administration and others. Michelle Goldberg has a very interesting “op-ed piece”: in The New York Times, the headline “Donald Trump Is Doing Something … Good? Conservatives get serious about criminal justice reform.” But she lays out the number of conservative political actors, not meaning Hollywood actors, but who did go to prison, I mean, people like Chuck Colson, of Watergate fame, who goes to prison and gets deeply involved with the prison reform movement, right through, right now, to Kevin Ring, president of the criminal justice reform organization Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a former Republican Hill staff member who once helped draft a law imposing mandatory minimums for meth dealers.

VAN JONES: Yeah. Well, I mean, the actual thing that’s happening, the incarceration industry has gotten so big, mass incarceration has gotten so massive, that now Republicans, Democrats, white folks, black folks, brown folks, poor folks, even some rich folks sometimes, wind up getting pulled in. And when you get pulled in or a family member gets pulled in or a neighbor gets pulled in or a co-worker gets pulled in, you realize we have unleashed a horror on this country. And you cannot get out of it. You’ve got to do something about it. And so, you do have people who are directly impacted, on both sides of the aisle now, who fought until the last dog barked, who backed McConnell down, who beat the dog crap out of Tom Cotton and won this thing, because people —

VAN JONES: Yeah, well, Tom remains opposed. He got 11 votes, or, I mean, he got destroyed, because that old law-and-order, scare-everybody crap, he tried to pull that stuff, and Republicans voted him down. And so, you’re in a situation now where there is — a change has begun to happen. And, you know, this idea that Trump is just doing this because he’s going to go to jail, whatever, look, Trump could just pardon all his family members right now and be done with it and just walk off. I think that something has happened in —

AMY GOODMAN: Not for the New York investigations.

VAN JONES: Well, I’m just saying that for most of these — I think the cynicism — and, Amy, I’ve got to speak to this. The level of cynicism and pain and frustration that has now built up on the left because of this nightmare in the White House should not rob us of a victory that we have fought for now for 25 years, long before any of these people were in office, people like me and people who are listening to this radio station and have been fighting at the local level. And we have finally come to a point where even the Republican Party agrees with us. And I don’t want any of your listeners to say, “Well, I’m not going to believe something good is happening.” No, when we fight and we don’t give up, good things can happen, even under the Trump administration. Let’s not take — let’s not let the cynicism take that away.

AMY GOODMAN: And let me ask you about Jared Kushner, this all happening — something he is very much pushing and getting credit for — in this period of time, these months, when he’s been an adviser to the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, how to get out of these accusations that he was responsible for murdering the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Your thoughts on this? You even got to — you work with him all the time, but you even got to interview him on this subject.

VAN JONES: Yeah, sure. Listen, I disagree with the Trump administration on many things. I always say, I’ve got 99 conflicts with the Trump administration, but prisons ain’t one. And so, I’m not here to try to litigate everything that they’ve done.

But what I can say about Jared Kushner is, on this issue, he has been relentless. He’s been dogged. Everything he said he would do, he has done, which I can’t say about most of the Democrats involved, frankly, or most of the Republicans. And so, on this issue, I can say to you and to anybody else — and, Amy, as you know, I’m a founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. We helped to close five abusive youth prisons in California, stop a super-jail. I’m not a newcomer to this issue. Before I was ever on CNN, I was fighting on this issue. And I can say that Jared Kushner, on this issue, has been as dogged and determined as any other impacted family member in this movement.

AMY GOODMAN: So let’s talk about some of the progressive groups, like the Movement for Black Lives. The coalition of more than 150 black-led organizations has come out against the FIRST STEP Act. They wrote a statement, quote, “This bill is custom-made for rich white men. All of the carve outs make the vast majority of our people ineligible for the benefits of the bill. Moreover, by mandating post release surveillance the bill opens the door to increased privatization while causing additional harm to the most marginalized of our people. We believe all of this will be done while giving liberal cover to the Trump Administration as they attack, cage, and warehouse Black, brown, and working class people across the country.” The Movement for Black Lives also points out the bill explicitly excludes immigrants from access to early release and rehab programs and will direct money, say, from early releases to go back into law enforcement. They say the bill encourages profiteering and makes false promises about bringing black prisoners home. Your thoughts, Van?

VAN JONES: Well, I’ll say they should have told the Congressional Black Caucus that, because the vast majority of black lawmakers voted for it. And some of those things are not accurate. Let me say this — Jessica is smarter on the policy. Let me just say this: It’s called the FIRST STEP Act. It’s not the LAST STEP Act; it’s the FIRSTSTEP Act. This bill does not do any harm to anyone. The goodness in the bill doesn’t get to as many people. There’s good programs in there that don’t — everybody can’t participate in. The goodness in the bill doesn’t get to as many people as we want to, but there is not one additional piece of harm. Not one sentence gets any longer. Nobody serves an extra day. And that, by itself, is something of a victory. And I’ll say more after Jessica.

JESSICA JACKSON SLOAN: So, I just wanted to jump in and correct some of that misinformation, because I just don’t want to have viewers listening and thinking that that is true. And it’s just not.

I’ve seen the numbers. The US Sentencing Commission actually did an analysis, and the exclusions actually are pretty much across the board for white, black and Hispanic individuals. Those exclusions are for a small part of the bill: the time credits that people can earn by doing programming. There are plenty of pieces of the bill that do apply to everybody who’s inside of the prison, regardless of what crime they committed, including the increased good time credit that people can earn off of their sentence for good behavior.

I also want to point to the crack cocaine retroactivity. That disproportionately is going to impact African Americans who are inside. There are going to be a lot more African Americans coming home in this first batch of individuals who are coming home than any other race, and that is because people fought very, very hard — Dick Durbin, in particular — to make sure that nothing went forward that didn’t include a massive fix of retroactivity on the Fair Sentencing Act, which had been passed almost a decade ago.

So, I just want to correct some of that misinformation on the immigrants piece also. You know, I’m sorry we couldn’t get away with getting rid of the current ban on people who are here undocumented going to halfway houses. We tried. We pushed. We were unable to get away from it. But it is just a continuation of the status quo. So, I just wanted to address those couple points, and invite people to look at FirstStepAct.org, if they want to check out all the wonderful things that are in this bill.

AMY GOODMAN: And how you extend this beyond federal prisoners? This deals with 10 percent, right? Two hundred thousand prisoners in federal prison. What about now the model being for all prisoners? What’s your next step, Jessica?

JESSICA JACKSON SLOAN: Well, you know, we’re already getting calls from state legislators across the country asking us, “Can we do this in my state? What can we do in my state?” And not just Democratic state legislators. Both sides of the aisle now feel comfortable. They’re seeing there was a clear mandate by Congress: 87 to 12, 358 to 35. I mean, just a mandate. And every single one of the amendments meant to be poison pills, slapped down. So, they’re wanting to get going in their own states. This really has made an impact on the narrative. And I think we’re going to see a lot of trickle-down justice coming from this bill.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us.

AMY GOODMAN: Van, you wanted to say something? Ten seconds.

VAN JONES: I just want to add one thing. This actually may take off the table criminal justice as a weapon against Democrats in 2020, for the first time since 1988 with Willie Horton. You now have — because Republicans are embracing, for whatever reason, Trump embracing, for whatever reason, now it’s a lot harder to say that progressives and Democrats are going to make it less safe, when literally you have both parties on one accord. So, politically, this is very, very smart for Democrats and progressives. We are now more safe than ever to keep pushing for progress.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us, Jessica Jackson Sloan, co-founder and national director of #cut50; Van Jones, president and co-founder of #cut50, also commentator on CNN.

This is Democracy Now! By the way, tune in on Monday to Democracy Now!, in one of our holiday specials, an hour with Angela Davis. She talks about her life, in prison, outside, professor, philosopher, activist. That’s Monday on Democracy Now!

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, Nanette Barragán will join us. She just came back from the US-Mexico border, where she personally facilitated the crossing of Maria, a Honduran mother who was made famous by the video of US border guards tear-gassing as she took her children across the border this week. Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: “Goo Goo Wah Wah” by Wah Wah Watson. That’s Melvin “Wah Wah Watson” Ragin, master of the wah-wah pedal, died in October at the age of 67.</s>The US House voted overwhelmingly Thursday to pass historic criminal justice reform, sending the sweeping package to Donald Trump in a major bipartisan victory for the president.

The measure, which cleared the Senate earlier in the week, paves the way for the most significant change to America's justice system in decades.

The First Step Act includes provisions to ease heavy sentences for certain offenders, give judges more discretion in sentencing low-level criminals, and improve prison conditions for women, among others.

"Members of Congress came together to write a bill that reduces the impact of draconian mandatory minimums, and makes progress to address discriminatory sentencing laws," top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi said.

The legislation "will bring hope, healing and renewal to thousands of lives."

Trump has said he will sign the measure into law.

"America is the greatest Country in the world and my job is to fight for ALL citizens, even those who have made mistakes," Trump tweeted after the Senate passed the bill earlier in the week.

It passed the House by a vote of 358 to 36.

"These reforms to our criminal justice system will not only reduce recidivism and make communities safer, but they will help people into lives of purpose," said outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan.

One element of the bill would make retroactive the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, which altered sentencing guidelines to treat crack and powder cocaine offenses equally. According to government figures, that alone would impact over 2,600 inmates.

But the bill will only affect America's federal inmates, of which there are 180,789, according to the latest figures from the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the total US incarcerated population was over 2.1 million at the end of 2016.
U.S. President Donald Trump signs the First Step Act, a bipartisan prison and sentencing reform bill, into law.