{"id":385389,"date":"2018-11-17T04:41:02","date_gmt":"2018-11-17T03:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/what-the-latest-bipartisan-prison-reform-gets-wrong-and-why-it-matters\/"},"modified":"2018-11-17T04:41:02","modified_gmt":"2018-11-17T03:41:02","slug":"what-the-latest-bipartisan-prison-reform-gets-wrong-and-why-it-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/what-the-latest-bipartisan-prison-reform-gets-wrong-and-why-it-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Latest Bipartisan Prison Reform Gets Wrong and Why It Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A specter is haunting the United States \u2014 the specter of \u201cbipartisan prison reform.\u201d Although the last effort at bipartisan prison reform<\/a><\/span> stalled out in 2014-15, the US now seems poised to pass the \u201cFirst Step Act,\u201d after Donald Trump signaled his support for the measure in a statement at the White House on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Passage of the bill would be a major victory for Trump. A number of liberal and progressive commentators have gone all in on the legislation, which has been heavily shaped by Jared Kushner and Koch Industries attorney Mark Holden. CNN commentator and Cut50<\/a><\/span> cofounder Van Jones praised Trump. \u201cGive the man his due,\u201d Jones tweeted<\/a><\/span>, saying the president is \u201con his way to becoming the uniter-in-Chief on an issue that has divided America for generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, regardless of who is \u201cuniting\u201d around its passage, the bill itself is both weak and dangerous. While it offers a few token reforms \u2014 some of them, like the end of shackling for pregnant and post-partum women in federal custody, necessary and long overdue \u2014 it leaves many of the most pressing issues<\/a><\/span> off the table. It barely makes a dent in terms of reducing the length of prison sentences or reducing the number of people in prison. Meanwhile, it heightens the use of racist and classist assessment mechanisms and expands the net of surveillance.<\/p>\n

The proposed bill includes a few minor reductions in sentence length for federal prisoners, by expanding potential access to good time credits and lowering the age of consideration for compassionate release However, it will not make any sentence reductions retroactive (except for the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act<\/a><\/span>, which minimized \u2014 but did not erase \u2014 the disparity between crack and cocaine sentences). This means that people who are currently serving, for example, life sentences for drug offenses will not get any relief from this bill. A press release<\/a><\/span> from the National Fraternal Order of Police, which endorsed the First Step Act, indicates that the…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A specter is haunting the United States \u2014 the specter of \u201cbipartisan prison reform.\u201d Although the last effort at bipartisan prison reform stalled out in 2014-15, the US now seems poised to pass the \u201cFirst Step Act,\u201d after Donald Trump signaled his support for the measure in a statement at the White House on Wednesday. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-385389","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}