Encouraging steps reported in Justice Department’s latest annual report on First Step Act implementation
I just today saw that the US Department of Justice has released its latest yearly update on the implementation of the First Step Act under the thritting title “First Step Act Annual Report, June 2024.” This 50-page report has this simple introduction:
The First Step Act of 2018 (“First Step Act,” “FSA,” or “Act”) was significant bipartisan legislation to improve criminal justice outcomes and reduce the size of the federal prison population, while maintaining public safety. Under Section 101 of the Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3634, the Attorney General is required to submit a report beginning two years after the date of enactment, and annually thereafter for a period of five years. The report details the activities undertaken, accomplishments reached, and planned future initiatives in carrying out the law. The Department of Justice (the Department) submitted its third such report to Congress in April 2023. This is the fourth Annual Report.
What follows is a detailed “Executive Summary” and then an extraordinary amount of information and data about implementation on many First Step Act fronts. Here are just the bullet headings for the summary’s description of “Significant activities since the last Report”:
- Maximizing the availability of time credits.…
- Enhancing the use of home confinement and prerelease custody.…
- Increasing capacity and participation in evidence-based programming to reduce recidivism.…
- Expanding mental health and substance use treatment programs….
- Enhancing Reentry Programming.…
- Assessing and updating the Prisoner Assessment Tool Targeting Estimated Risk andNeeds (PATTERN).…
- Improving Standardized Prisoner Assessment for Reduction in Criminality (SPARC-13) needs assessment system.…
- Releasing Identification Cards….
As reported in this post last year, the Council on Criminal Justice produced an encouraging short data report, titled “First Step Act: An Early Analysis of Recidivism,” which concluded that persons released under the First Step Act had notably lower recidivism rates. Another sophisticated data analysis would be needed to determine whether and how this latest DOJ report (which has updated recidivism data) continues this encouraging story, but this report certainly seems to suggest that the First Step Act is achieving its broad goals of reducing reoffending among people leaving federal prisons.