In 2018, President Trump signed the First Step Act into law and it was supposed to be historic federal criminal justice reform. Congress, for the first time in many years, worked together despite party affiliation and gloated about the bipartisanship that was undergone. However, soon after the Act’s passage the federal Bureau of Prisons took it upon itself to restructure the law so that federal prisoners would have a difficult time acquiring the benefits of the law.
This article discusses the implementation of the Act and how the Bureau of Prisons overstepped its authority by changing the ways to get time off for its incarcerated offenders and not offering programming to get First Step Act time credits. There’s statistics and other information for the reader to glean how there should be something done to rectify this abuse of authority by the Bureau.