Earlier this month, President Donald Trump threw a party to celebrate one of his only bipartisan victories, the First Step Act, which is supposed to reduce the size of the federal prison population. At the time, I wrote that “the celebration could be premature: Criminal justice reform groups point out that the administration has so far struggled to implement the law, and has failed to fully fund its programs. As Trump continues to brag about the measure, inmates at federal prisons around the country are left in limbo, and many wonder when or if they'll see the benefits of the law's promised reforms.” Now there's another key indication that the First Step Act isn't being implemented as criminal justice reform groups and some lawmakers intended.
On Monday, the Justice Department announced that the Hudson Institute, a conservative DC-based think tank whose leaders have espoused harsh views on incarceration, would choose the members of an independent committee to help develop a risk assessment tool—a crucial component of the law, as it will be used to determine which federal offenders get access to certain rehabilitative programs and therefore establish how long they remain in prison. Under the law, inmates who participate in these programs will be rewarded with an option to spend more of their sentence at a halfway house or in home confinement. The tool also may be required before the Federal Bureau of Prisons agrees to release thousands of prisoners who thought the law would allow them to immediately shorten their sentences because of their good behavior during incarceration. (As I've written before, prison reform groups who pushed for the law were under the impression that the release of these well-behaved inmates would be immediate and not tied to the development of the risk assessment tool; officials in charge of the law's implementation have disagreed, leaving the prisoners hanging in the middle.)
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