Why the First Step Act's Good Time Fix Didn't Bring People Home Right Away

Why the release dates didn't change right away

When the First Step Act became law in December 2018, many families expected loved ones to come home right away. They did not. A drafting problem tied the new good time rules to a risk assessment system that did not exist yet, and that delayed the change by about seven months.

Update (October 2026): The delay described below is over. The good time increase took effect on July 19, 2019, when the Justice Department released its risk and needs assessment system. That day, DOJ announced that more than 3,100 people would be released because of the change. Today, federal prisoners can earn up to 54 days of good conduct time for each year of the sentence imposed under 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b).

What the law changed

Good conduct time (often called "good time") is credit off a federal sentence for following prison rules.

Before the First Step Act, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) calculated good time in a way that gave a maximum of about 47 days per year of the sentence. The First Step Act raised that to 54 days per year, about seven extra days for each year.

Advocates estimated that about 4,000 people would be eligible for release right away, in time for the 2018 holidays.

The drafting problem

The law said the new good time rules would take effect only once the Attorney General finished a "risk and needs assessment system." That system was not due until months later.

Several prisoner advocates told Reuters they were working with the White House to find a workaround. In their view, Congress never meant to tie good time to that system; the law had mixed up good time credits with the new earned time credits. Good time shortens a sentence. Earned time credits, by contrast, let people move to a halfway house or home confinement sooner, and those were meant to depend on the risk assessment. The good time change itself shortens sentences by only about one week per year.

Families left waiting

Robert Shipp had served 25 years for a drug offense. His release date was in November 2019. The new law would have cut about 175 days from his sentence, making him eligible for a halfway house or home confinement right away.

"Literally, my brother has packed his stuff and is waiting for the call," his sister, Veda Ajamu, said.

Courts would not step in. On January 3, 2019, U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman in Chicago denied one prisoner's request. She wrote that the court was "not unsympathetic," but was "obligated to apply the law as it is written."

Kevin Ring, president of FAMM (Families Against Mandatory Minimums), called it "a frustrating mistake." He said: "You have thousands of families who thought the day this bill passed, their loved ones' sentence was going to be recalculated and they were going to walk out of their halfway house, their home confinement…or leave prison."

Today, if a release date looks wrong, ask the case manager for a copy of the BOP's sentence computation and check it against the judgment (the court's written sentencing order). Errors do happen, and the paperwork is the place to start.

Sources: Sarah N. Lynch, "Error in U.S. prisons law means well-behaved inmates wait longer for release," Reuters, January 2019; Steven Nelson, "Prisoners Due for Release Under First Step Act Stuck in Limbo," Washington Examiner, December 28, 2018.

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