3,100 inmates freed under new justice overhaul law

WASHINGTON — More than 3,000 inmates were freed from federal prison Friday as part of the Justice Department’s implementation of a bipartisan criminal justice overhaul that President Donald Trump signed into law late last year.

The department has faced sharp criticism over its execution of the act. The partial government shutdown in January stymied progress on its implementation, which was further overshadowed by a debate over when the bill authorized the release of thousands of prisoners.

Advocates have expressed worries that the department would slow-walk implementation because former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and others within the department who stayed on after he was fired had fiercely opposed the law.

The deputy attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, sought to tamp down those concerns at a news conference Friday announcing that the department had met the deadline for the prison releases, as well as other milestones of the law, called the First Step Act.

“The timely, efficient and effective implementation of the First Step Act is a priority for the Department of Justice and this administration,” Rosen said. “The department intends to implement this law fully and on time.”

In addition to the release of 3,100 inmates, the Justice Department said it had redirected $75 million from Bureau of Prisons inmate care programs and institutional administrative funding to fully fund the law for the fiscal year that started in October.

The department will work with Congress to obtain the funds needed for the law going forward, Rosen said, including money for services at its heart, such as vocational and job readiness training, rehabilitation and trauma care services that prisoners can participate in to earn reduced sentences.

He also said the department had created a tool that gauges whether inmates are ready to leave prison. The Bureau of Prisons will use the tool to screen all federal inmates to identify risk factors that could increase their likelihood of recidivism, and match them with programs aimed at reducing that risk, such as drug treatment and job training courses.

As the law is written, inmates who had already earned credits and were eligible for early release could not leave until after the Justice Department created the risk assessment tool. Critics argued in recent months that the language did not accurately reflect the intent of the lawmakers who drafted the bill, and they pressed Congress to rewrite it so that thousands of prisoners could immediately be freed.

That didn’t happen, so the eligible prisoners had to wait until Friday for early release. Of the 3,100 prisoners released nationwide, about a third of them were subject to detainers, meaning they will go from federal custody to serve state prison sentences or they are in the United States illegally and will be released to face immigration court proceedings.

The criminal justice overhaul passed overwhelmingly in December. Trump has hosted two events to highlight the law.

“Sessions represented an all-time low for prospects for successful passage at the time and also prospects for implementation,” said Holly Harris, the president of Justice Action Network, a criminal justice reform advocacy group. “We’re looking at a vastly improved situation,” she said of Attorney General William Barr, who replaced Sessions in February.

Barr assured supporters of the law that he would back its full implementation. Before his confirmation hearing, he met with senators, including Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who is the former head of the Senate Judiciary Committee and is one of the bill’s strongest backers. Barr said his thinking on criminal justice had evolved, and he no longer supported the harsh sentencing measures that he had pushed for during his first stint as attorney general in the early 1990s.

“After someone has been in prison for a substantial period of time, and you can really assess whether they continue to pose a threat to the community,” Barr said in an interview this month, “then obviously you’re more inclined to modify the sentence or strike the balance in favor of some kind of monitoring that doesn’t involve the heavy cost and the isolation of this kind of prison system.”

The law consists of a package of incentives and new programs designed to improve prison conditions and prepare prisoners considered low risks for recidivism to re-enter society. It also outlawed the shackling of pregnant inmates and the placement of youthful offenders in solitary confinement, and said the Bureau of Prisons must place prisoners close to home if possible.

The law also makes retroactive the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, which decreased the relative penalty for possession of crack versus powder cocaine.