September 24, 2021–Due Process Institute urged Majority Leader Schumer and Minority Leader McConnell to schedule the consideration of three bipartisan bills, which have passed out of committee, that will improve the fairness and efficiency of federal sentencing and detention policies: the First Step Implementation Act of 2021 (S. 1014), the COVID–19 Safer Detention Act of 2021 (S. 312), and the Prohibiting Punishment of Acquitted Conduct Act of 2021 (S. 601).
The First Step Implementation Act builds on the success of the First Step Act by making modest changes to federal sentencing laws, such as broadening judicial discretion to potentially sentence people below otherwise applicable mandatory minimums; retroactively applying certain sentencing reforms in the First Step Act to people who were sentenced before it was passed; and allowing judges to possibly reduce sentences for some people convicted of crimes they committed as minors.
The COVID–19 Safer Detention Act makes improvements to the compassionate release and home confinement release programs, including providing judicial review of the Bureau of Prisons’ determinations of eligibility for release on elderly home confinement; giving people “good time” credit towards their eligibility for the Elderly Home Detention Pilot Program (as was intended in the First Step Act); and clarifying eligibility for relief under certain other First Step Act reforms to compassionate release and elderly home confinement.
The Prohibiting Punishment of Acquitted Conduct Act makes federal sentencing fairer and vindicates the right to a jury trial by limiting the use of acquitted conduct (charges for which a defendant was found “not guilty” by a jury) to increase a defendant’s sentence on a separate unrelated offense.
For people awaiting sentencing now, delaying passage of the First Step Implementation Act or the Prohibiting Punishment of Acquitted Conduct Act could lead to their being sentenced under current law thereby unnecessarily receiving a much longer term of imprisonment as a result. Americans are being left to languish in federal prison long past the point of any arguable penological benefit, and they cannot be helped by outside actors; only the federal government can release them. The sooner Congress passes these bills, the sooner the other branches can begin to execute these reforms.