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.
“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.
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.”