Risk and Needs Assessment
in Prison Reform
THE FIRST
STEP ACT
December 21, 2018, President Trump signed into law the First Step Act of 2018
(P.L. 115-391). The act was the culmination of several years of congressional
debate about what Congress might do to reduce the size of the federal
prison population while also creating mechanisms to maintain public safety.
This article provides an overview of the provisions of the act. This act has three
major components: Correctional reform via the establishment of a risk and needs
assessment system at the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Sentencing reform via changes to
penalties for some federal offenses. And the reauthorization of the Second Chance
Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-199). The act also contains a series of other criminal justicerelated
provisions.
The First Step Act requires the Department of Justice (DOJ) to develop a risk and
needs assessment system to be used by the BOP to assess the recidivism risk of
all federal prisoners and to place prisoners in programs and productive activities
to reduce this risk. Prisoners who successfully complete recidivism reduction
programming and productive activities can earn additional time credits that will allow
them to be placed in prerelease custody (such as, home confinement or a Residential
Reentry Center) earlier than they were previously allowed.
The act prohibits prisoners convicted of any one of dozens of offenses from
earning additional time credits, though these prisoners can earn other benefits,
such as additional visitation time, for successfully completing recidivism reduction
programming. Offenses that make prisoners ineligible to earn additional time credits
can generally be categorized as violent, terrorism, espionage, human trafficking, sex,
and sexual exploitation, repeat felon in possession of firearm, certain fraud, or highlevel
drug offenses.
The act makes changes to the penalties for some federal offenses. The act
modified mandatory minimum prison sentences for some drug traffickers with
prior drug convictions by increasing the threshold for prior convictions that count
toward triggering higher mandatory minimums for repeat offenders, reducing
the 20-year mandatory minimum (applicable where the offender has one prior
qualifying conviction) to a 15-year mandatory minimum, and reducing a life-in-prison
mandatory minimum (applicable where the offender has two or more prior qualifying
convictions) to a 25-year mandatory minimum.
The act made the provisions of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-220)
retroactive so that currently incarcerated offenders who received longer sentences
for possession of crack cocaine than they would have received if sentenced for
possession of the same amount of powder cocaine before the enactment of the
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