A glass-half-empty look at federal compassionate release data since FIRST STEP Act

Extrapolating based on the latest data from the US Sentencing Commission, since passage of the FIRST STEP Act in December 2018, nearly 5000 persons have secured a reduced term of imprisonment for "extraordinary and compelling reasons" pursuant to so-called "compassionate release" motions under 3582(c)(1)(A).  This number, which amounts to an average of roughly 100 sentence reduction grants per month, is a 50-times increase from the average of two such reductions per month in the year before the FIRST STEP Act made it possible for prisoners to get their motions directly to courts.  (COVID is a big part of this story: USSC data show many hundreds of grants each month during the second half of 2020 and first part of 2021; grants have average closer to 50 per month through 2022.)

But while sentence reductions grants are much more common since passage of the FIRST STEP Act, they are still not common.  After all, roughly 400,000 persons have served federal prison sentences over the last five years, so only just over 1% of all federal prisoners have secured relief under 3582(c)(1)(A).  And this new NPR piece, headlined "Frail people are left to die in prison as judges fail to act on a law to free them," stresses data detailing how many are not securing relief.  Here are excerpts:

[D]ata from the U.S. Sentencing Commission shows judges rejected more than 80% of compassionate release requests filed from October 2019 through September 2022. Judges made rulings without guidance from the sentencing commission, an independent agency that develops sentencing policies for the courts.

The commission was delayed for more than three years because Congress did not confirm Trump's nominees and President Joe Biden's appointees were not confirmed until August.  As a result, academic researchers, attorneys, and advocates for prison reform said the law has been applied unevenly across the country. 

Later this week, the federal sentencing commission is poised to hold an open meeting in Washington, D.C. to discuss the problem. They'll be reviewing newly proposed guidelines that include, among other things, a provision that would give consideration to people housed in a correctional facility who are at risk from an infectious disease or public health emergency....

The First Step Act brought fresh attention to compassionate release, which had rarely been used in the decades after it was authorized by Congress in the 1980s.  The new law allowed people in prison to file motions for compassionate release directly with federal courts.  Before, only the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons could petition the court on behalf of a sick prisoner, which rarely happened....

The number of applications for compassionate release began soaring in March 2020, when the World Health Organization declared a pandemic emergency.  Even as COVID devastated prisons, judges repeatedly denied most requests....  Data suggests decisions in federal courts varied widely by geography.  For example, the 2nd Circuit (Connecticut, New York, and Vermont) granted 27% of requests, compared with about 16% nationally.  The 5th Circuit (Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas) approved about 10 %. Judges in the 11th Circuit (Alabama, Florida, and Georgia) approved roughly 11% of requests. In one Alabama district, only six of 141 motions were granted — or about 4% — the sentencing commission data shows....

Sentencing commission officials did not make leaders available to answer questions about whether a lack of guidance from the panel kept sick and dying people behind bars.  The new sentencing commission chair, Carlton Reeves, said during a public hearing in October that setting new guidelines for compassionate release is a top priority.

Interestingly this NPR piece, though seemingly about denials of sentence reductions, focuses on a drug offender with stage 4 cancer who did secure compassionate release last year.  I cannot help but wonder if the reporter was not quite able to find a compelling case in which a sentence reduction was denied for a "frail [person] left to die in prison," though I am sure there are such cases.