The House Committee's report highlighted Bureau of Prison data about recidivism, and warned of the fiscal and social costs of repeated arrest, conviction and incarceration.

[5] It also expressed concern with shrinking educational and vocational opportunities for inmates, given the proven potential of those activities to reduce criminal tendencies.

[11] In an unusual procedural move, and after reversing his statement that he would not proceed on a vote until 2019,[12] the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on December 13, 2018, substituted the content of The First Step Act (S. 3747) into a S. 756—a substantively unrelated bill called the Save Our Seas Act, which was originally introduced by Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) on March 29, 2017—in order to solicit final amendments and bring the matter to a vote.

[14] They argued that these reforms were necessary to protect victims,[15] but bill-backers viewed the move as a last-minute effort to derail months of consensus building.

In the House, Representatives Doug Collins (R-GA-9), Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY-8) and John Lewis (D-GA-5) promoted similar legislation, albeit without sentencing reform provisions.

Though President Donald Trump was initially skeptical of the legislation, intense lobbying by his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner eventually persuaded him to back the bill and push for a floor vote in 2018.

[12] Kushner's efforts included contacting the Murdoch family (who own Fox News) to encourage positive coverage, appearing on Fox, securing Vice President Mike Pence's support, scheduling policy time discussions with Trump, and arranging meetings with celebrities like Kanye West and Kim Kardashian and media players like Van Jones to lobby Trump.

[23] Notable Republican lawmakers who opposed the bill included Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR), John Kennedy (R-LA), Ben Sasse (R-NE), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).

[24] Though Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) was originally opposed to the legislation, he ultimately backed the bill after an amendment he drafted to expand the crime exclusion list was adopted.

[24][26] However, some liberal commentators such as Roy L. Austin Jr., who worked on criminal justice in the Obama administration, criticized the act for not delivering more relief to more prisoners.

[29] Title I directs the U.S. Attorney General to develop and publicly announce a risk and needs assessment system for all Federal Bureau of Prison inmates within 180 days of enactment, and to recommend evidence-based recidivism reduction activities.

These incentives include increased access to phone privileges, transfer to penal institutions closer to a prisoner's primary residence, and time credits to reduce sentence length.

§ 3632(d)(4)(D)—where Title I of the First Step Act was codified—details nearly 70 types of convictions that render an inmate ineligible to accrue time credits for successfully completing recidivism-reduction activities.

[30] Additionally, prisoners subject to "a final order of removal"—which renders an individual deportable—are also ineligible from receiving good time credit incentives.

[31] This title also increases the number of good-time credits per year—small sentenced reductions earned by prisoners for good behavior—from 47 to 54, which many believe was consistent with the original intent behind 18 U.S.C.

[42] While many groups applauded those developments, both liberal and conservative critics suggest that the Trump administration's Department of Justice did not properly apply the law, resulting in fewer prisoners enjoying the release and sentencing adjustment reforms than Congress intended.

[46] The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, The Leadership Conference Education Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU Law, The Justice Roundtable, Media Mobilizing Project, and Upturn replied in a joint letter to DOJ outlining concerns about the transparency of PATTERN's algorithmic development, and its potential for exacerbating existing racial discrepancies in the criminal justice system.

[49] On April 3, 2020, Attorney General William Barr issued a memo pursuant to § 12003(b)(2) of the CARES Act directing the BOP to review the sentences of all prisoners with COVID-19 risk factors and prioritize their transfer to home confinement, starting with the most at-risk facilities.

[50] Given the expanded eligibility for transfer to home confinement, many federal prisoners are trying to utilize the First Step Act's amended compassionate release provisions at 18 U.S.C.

In United States v. McCarthy, Judge Hall of the United States District Court of Connecticut agreed with an inmate, finding that a for a 65-year-old prisoner suffering from COPD, asthma, and other lung-related ailments, the risk of infection from COVID-19 in prison was an "extraordinary and compelling reason" to justify his release from BOP custody, subject to post-release supervision conditions.

"[53] In addition to differing on the merits of compassionate release petitions during the COVID-19 pandemic, federal courts are split as of May 2020 on the question of whether the administrative requirements of 18 U.S.C.

Ky in United States v. Hofmeister) have held that the administrative exhaustion requirements are not subject to equitable waiver even during the COVID-19 pandemic, and must be complied with before federal courts can review the substance of the petitions.

[57] In June 2020, a unanimous panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit including then-Judge Amy Coney Barrett, held that during resentencing under the Act, a previous sentence over double the United States Federal Sentencing Guidelines range could not simply be reimposed without explanation.

[58][59] In the Supreme Court case, Terry v. United States (2021), the Court decided unanimously that the resentencing provisions of Section 404, applying to changes in the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, only apply to possession crimes that carried mandatory minimum sentences (tier 1 and 2 charges, both which were evoked on carrying minimum quantities of crack cocaine), and not tier 3 possession crimes.