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January 26, 2022

Articulating concerns while celebrating implementation of FIRST STEP earned-time credits

As first discussed in this post, the Department of Justice a few weeks ago officially announced its new rule for "implementing the Time Credits program required by the First Step Act"; as noted in this follow-up post, the process of awarding retroactive credits to prisoners who were eligible and had already done the work to earn credits resulted in an immediate significant reduction of the federal prison population.  And though there is much to celebrate about this stage of implementation of a huge part of the FIRST STEP Act — which was enacted with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress and signed by President Trump way back in late 2018 — I have noticed a number of new commentaries and other press pieces flagging concerns to watch.

This CNN opinion piece, by Michael Cohen, E. Danya Perry and Joshua Perry, carries a headline that is most celebratory: "This is an unmistakable win for incarcerated people."  But, after an effective review of the positives of the new DOJ rules on earned-time credits, it closes with these sentiments:

There is still a lot of work to be done. There are strong indications that the BOP is not offering enough high-quality programs to help support people in prison, particularly during the pandemic.  While unquestionably impactful, the act was indeed only a "first step" towards broader changes that are desperately needed to reduce our cruel and counterproductive overreliance on incarceration.  And even this welcome development does not erase the needless suffering of too many people, while the BOP pushed back against inmates seeking time credit and initially proposed a rule that cut against Congress' intent.

This Forbes piece by Walter Palvo picks up these themes with even more concern for the implementation particulars under the headline "Bureau Of Prisons Begins Implementing First Step Act With Release Of Thousands In Custody":

One concern is that there does not appear to be a consistent way these ETCs are being calculated at each institution.  Case managers, who have been keying in classes that prisoners have taken over the past two years, seem to have a liberal way of calculating ETC and those who I have spoke to about their release have no idea how their release date was calculated.  As one man told me, “I was just happy to be released and don’t care how they calculated it.”  However, for the man or woman sitting in prison, it makes a huge difference.  Many advocates may be giving one another high-fives, but, as history has demonstrated, the BOP somehow finds a way to mess up a good thing. The law. already has flaws as there are a number of exceptions carved out to prevent some offenses from being ineligible from earning ETC. 

And this new NPR piece from Carrie Johnson spotlights long-standing concerns about the PATTERN risk-assessment tool central to these new prison policies.  The lengthy piece is headline "Flaws plague a tool meant to help low-risk federal prisoners win early release," and here are excerpts:

Thousands of people are leaving federal prison this month thanks to a law called the First Step Act, which allowed them to win early release by participating in programs aimed at easing their return to society. But thousands of others may still remain behind bars because of fundamental flaws in the Justice Department's method for deciding who can take the early-release track. The biggest flaw: persistent racial disparities that put Black and brown people at a disadvantage.

In a report issued days before Christmas in 2021, the department said its algorithmic tool for assessing the risk a person in prison would return to crime produced uneven results. The algorithm, known as Pattern, overpredicted the risk that many Black, Hispanic and Asian people would commit new crimes or violate rules after leaving prison. At the same time, it also underpredicted the risk for some inmates of color when it came to possible return to violent crime....

Risk assessment tools are common in many states. But critics said Pattern is the first time the federal justice system is using an algorithm with such high stakes. Congress passed the First Step Act in 2018 with huge bipartisan majorities. It's designed to prepare people in prison for life afterwards, by offering credits toward early release for working or taking life skills and other classes while behind bars....

Only inmates who pose a low or minimal risk of returning to crime can qualify for the programs, with that risk level determined using the Pattern algorithm.... The implementation has been rocky. The Justice Department finished the first version of Pattern in a rush because of a tight deadline from Congress. It then had to make tweaks after finding Pattern suffered from math and human errors. About 14,000 men and women in federal prison still wound up in the wrong risk categories. There were big disparities for people of color.

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January 26, 2022 at 07:52 AM | Permalink

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