https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-pol-trump-first-step-advocates-20181220-story.html

President Trump signed into law Friday the first criminal justice reform bill in decades, a measure he dubbed a “monumental” stride forward to curbing the country’s prison population — but advocates say it’s only a “baby” step in the right direction.

The so-called First Step Act, which was heavily lobbied by Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, gives judges more sentencing discretion, relaxes some mandatory minimum sentencing requirements, improves some rudimentary incarceration conditions and gives exemplary inmates the opportunity to earn “credits” that they can use toward being given early releases.

“The First Step Act will make communities SAFER and SAVE tremendous taxpayers dollars,” Trump said in a statement after signing the bill. “It brings much needed hope to many families during the holiday season.”

The bill had overwhelming bipartisan support in both the Senate and the House — a rarity at a time of historic political division.

But criminal justice reform experts, advocates and several members of Congress contend the bill is — as the name implies — a first step at best.

“It’s a positive step but a baby one,” Nancy La Vigne, the vice president of justice policy at the Urban Institute, told the Daily News. “There’s a lot left to be done for people behind bars.”

In particular, La Vigne noted the law’s new “good time” and “earned time” credits are only effective to an extent.

First Step expands the “good time” credits that can currently be retroactively earned by well-behaved inmates from 47 days per year incarcerated to 54 days per year incarcerated, meaning they can now cut their prison time by an additional week per year as long as they stay out of trouble. The “earned time” credits, meanwhile, are awarded to inmates who participate in vocational and rehabilitative programs in exchange for being released early to halfway houses or home confinement, a measure intended to mitigate prison overcrowding and reduce recidivism.

However, the credits are only accessible to inmates deemed “low risk,” which typically means those who have committed lesser crimes.

“High risk” inmates, on the other hand, will not be able to earn such credits and La Vigne said they are the ones who could benefit the most from them.

“That’s the biggest missed opportunity,” La Vigne said.

The bill’s other major components are focused on sentencing reform.

The Fair Sentencing Act from 2010 will be retroactively applied to inmates sentenced to harsher punishments for possessing or distributing crack instead of powder cocaine — which was implemented as part of President Ronald Reagan’s “war on drugs” and blasted as racist by experts who noted that the disparity disproportionately affected African-Americans.

African-Americans make up a majority of the country’s prison population, outnumbering whites by nearly 50,000 people, and advocates say war on drugs sentencing disparities and aggressive police practices are to blame.

First Step also takes several steps to relax mandatory sentencing requirements.

The so-called “safety valve,” which allows judges to waive mandatory minimum sentencing requirements for certain drug offenses, will be expanded and the “three strikes” rule, which automatically imposes life sentences against people with three or more convictions of the same crime, will be eased and such offenders will instead be given 25-year sentences.

The law will also prevent prosecutors from compounding gun and drug charges to dole out decades-long sentences, leading to shorter sentences in the long run.

But critics say that, while the reforms are welcome, they don’t scrap mandatory minimum sentencing requirements altogether and do nothing to address police practices they say drive mass incarceration in the first place.

“It leaves intact the machinery that drives mass incarceration,” said Bob Ganji, the director of the New York-based Police Reform Organization Project. “If it’s only the beginning, then it will turn out to be a positive step but not if it ends there.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who backed the bill, echoed Ganji’s sentiment.

“There is much more needed to achieve comprehensive criminal justice reform,” Sanders tweeted. “We must: end cash bail, end private prisons, end mandatory minimums and reinstate the federal parole system. Our primary goal must be rehabilitation, not punishment.”

La Vigne also noted the First Step reforms only apply to the federal prison system, which holds about 180,000 inmates, paling in comparison to the total of 2.1 million people incarcerated in the U.S.

As an addendum, First Step implements some moderate reforms to improve the lives of prisoners, including banning the controversial practice of shackling female inmates while they’re giving birth.

But La Vigne said such reforms will only benefit a small segment of inmates and should have been instituted long ago.

“Women not being shackled, juveniles not being held in solitary confinement — these kind of seem like the bottom line of what should be required,” La Vigne said. “A lot of these changes are mostly symbolic.”