Newt's WorldOn December 21st, 2018, President Trump signed into law the First Step Act of 2018. The Act was the culmination of a bi-partisan effort to improve criminal justice outcomes, as well as to reduce the size of the federal prison population while also creating processes to maintain public safety. The First Step Act works to assess the recidivism risk and to place prisoners in recidivism reducing programs and productive activities to address their needs. On the fifth anniversary of the First Step Act, Newt talks with Jessica Jackson from Reform Alliance and Adam Clausen who benefited from the passage of the act.
On this episode of Newsworld. On December twenty one, twenty eighteen, President Trump signed into law the First Step Act of twenty eighteen. The Act was the culmination of a bipartisan effort to improve criminal justice outcomes as well as to reduce the size of the federal prison population while also creating processes to maintain public safety. The First Step Act works to assess the recidivism risk and to place prisoners in recidivism reducing programs and productive activities to address their needs. The Act also requires the Bureau of Prisons to assist inmates in applying for federal and state benefits and to obtain identification, including a Social Security card, driver's license, or other official photo identification, and birth certificate. On this fifth anniversary the First Step Act, I wanted to talk about the impact the passage of the actors had on people and the many lives that have been changed by So I'm really pleased to welcome my two guests, Jessica Jackson from Reform Alliance and Adam Clausen, who benefited from the passage of the Act. Jessica and Adam, welcome and thank you for joining me on newt World.
Thank you for having us on.
Yes, thank you, Jessica. Why is prison reform so important to you?
Well, for me, this issue is personal. I first came to this issue when I was twenty two years old and I found myself standing in a courtroom in Georgia, holding my two month old daughter and watching my husband get sentenced to fifteen serve six for his drug addiction. At the time, I had no education, no college, no law school. But watching what happened to him, and then seeing so many families in similar positions when I went in the prison to visit him, It's what drove me to get into being a lawyer and get into prison reform.
So that had a huge impact on your life.
Absolutely. I was planning on being a stay at home home but life had other plans for me.
You've got your bachelor's degree in political science and English from the Honors College of the University of South Florida. Then you got your jd. Juris Doctorate from Santa Clara University School of Law, where you got the Dean's Leadership Award. That's sure a whole lot of achievement for somebody who was just standing. They're not sure what they were going to do.
Yeah, I found my calling in that moment, and it's been encouraged ever since. Every time I meet somebody like Adam or one of the other families who has somebody who's in prison, I'm just driven to continue the work that I do.
Adam, we're very grateful to you agreed to share with us your experience. Let's start with, how did you end up in prison with a two hundred and thirteen year sentence.
Sure, that's a pretty outrageous number, isn't it. So I made a lot of mistakes in my youth, admittedly, and the first time I went to prison was eighteen years old, was with the wrong group of individuals, committed a string of burglaries and a robbery, sent me to a state prison. I did a few years. I didn't really come out with a plan on what I was going to do with my life. Fell right back into the same cycle when door after door was basically closed. I couldn't see any opportunity for myself, and you know, I struggled with addiction, the things that I did to cover up the underlying issues, the trauma that was there. So ultimately, I you know, found myself out of desperation. I committed a string of armed robberies that were very serious, which ultimately led me to federal court where I was facing mandatory minimum sentences for the use of a firearm during the commission of a crime.
Time.
Ultimately, I went to trial and I was sentenced to two hundred and thirteen years as a result of that string of robberies, which took place over the course of just two weeks. I was in my early twenties, and that was a lot of time to be sentenced to, and I found myself in federal prison, you know, then trying to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life.
Well, theoretically you'd have been two hundred and thirty eight when you got out. Were the sentences concurrent or were they supposed to be served one after the other.
I design this statute that basically netted me two hundred and five years. Of that two hundred and thirteen year sentence were mandatory minimums under the nine to twenty four s use of a firearm provision that was at that time was mandated to be served consecutively. And it's the only place the federal law where that sort of structure existed and that's how it resulted in such an outrageous sentence.
From that standpoint, Jessica, you were actually trying to deal with those kind of impossible sentencing. And what is it that led you to focus on passing the twenty eighteen First Step Act. Why did this matter to you so much?
Well, I think as you look around the country, you see a lot of really unfair sentencing, similar to what Adam described. You had three strikes you're out in California, that could be three petty thefts and you would have been out. You had people serving life for drug abuse when they were young. You have people who get the death penalty who haven't even killed somebody. So there's a lot of unfair sentencing all around the country. But for the federal government, which is the largest system, we knew that, you know, a lot of the sentences had been on the books for deaths gates and hadn't been touched, they hadn't been revisited. And we heard so many stories of people like Adam who had gone inside, taken accountability for what they had done, and taken advantage of the little bit of programming there was inside and really turned their lives around. And now they didn't have any hope forever coming home despite having made significant changes. I had to think to myself, right, when you're in your young twenties, like Adam was, you're a totally different person by the time you hit forty. And to not get a chance another chance at life, especially in a crime where nobody was hurt, to not get another chance to show that you can live in society is just devastating, and people didn't have any hope. So that's why we decided to work on the First Step Act. It was the most unlikely political atmosphere for such a bill, but it led to an incredible coalition of people coming together from across the Aisle.
I was gonna say, I remember working on this issue when President Obama was president at the time. We still couldn't move it, although we had. Governor Deal of Georgia gave just an amazingly compelling speech in one of the conferences about how his eyes had been open because his son had become a drug judge dealing with various drug addicts and drug dealings, and his son had convinced him there was something profoundly wrong about the way we were approaching it. Governor Deal was amazingly powerful in talking about giving people a second chance, but in something I don't think either of us could have predicted. After the twenty sixteen election, the folks working on this actually convinced President Trump, and on December twenty first, twenty eighteen, he signed it into law. Was that a surprise to you?
You know, I never in a million years would have thought that President Trump, who ran on American carnage, would have signed the most transformative criminal justice bill into law. But I got to give you and the other signatories of Right on Crime a lot of credit because we on the left, and I say this as a Democrat, you know, we've been at this fight for decades, just working and working, trying to turn back some of these archaic sentences. We've been talking about the rights of the individuals and their freedom and their dignity. And I don't think it was until my then boss Van Jones met you knew that we knew there was another side to this. Right, there's the conservative argument for criminal justice reform, and that is that our prison system has ballooned. It's become an incredibly expensive system that at the time was failing. Right sixty eight percent, we were spending billions of dollars a year on a system that was failing sixty eight percent of the time because people would come home and then they would end up back in prison, and there was no transparency in the system and no accountability. And it wasn't until we started working with you and other conservatives that we understood we were missing half the arguments out there there for reform.
I've been recruited really as early as the mid nineteen eighties by Chuck Colson, who had gone to jail as part of the Watergate process, and himself, I think had been transformed, created a prison ministry program and was a passionate, passionate advocate that you can save people, they can change their lives, and that one of our jobs is to lock up those who are guilty, but another one of our jobs is to help people who have turned their life around to have a chance to lead a full life. By the way, we should say. In addition to President Trump signing it, which was a big moment, the US Senate passed it eighty seven to twelve and the House passed it three fifty eight to thirty six. So clearly this was an idea whose time had come. But Jessica, can you walk us through for a minute, what exactly is the First Step Act and how does it work?
Yeah. So, the First Step Act was, as you said, bipartisan legislation passed in twenty eighteen that addressed both prison conditions and some sentencing reforms. Essentially, a group of Republicans had been working on legislation back in twenty thirteen that became bipartisan legislation. There was a bill passed in twenty thirteen that made some changes to the prison system, but it certainly didn't go far enough. In twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, we worked on another bipartisan bill, but we were unable to get it done under President Obama. I was shocked when I heard from Jared Kushner in twenty eighteen that Republicans still wanted to get this bill done, and specifically that the Trump administration was interested. But there were some very very obvious areas that needed reform. For one, the conditions that people were living in inside of prisons. We still had women who were being shackled while they were in labor in our federal prisons, which is just unbelievable. We still had women who were being denied the hygiene produce they needed every month. We still had people who were living in there, like I said before, with no hope. So we created an earned time system where if you're taking life changing classes and taking accountability for what you did and really working on yourself, you're able to earn some time off of your sentences. We also made sure that everybody coming home would have an ID when they come home. You can't get very far in society today without a basic form of identification. We had people who were telling us stories about having to smuggle their prison ID out because they didn't have their birth certificate, or their Social Security card or their driver's license. So there were some very basic changes inside, including a risk assessment tool that has been implemented, and then there were also some sentencing reform changes like the one that Adam benefited from, and then looking at some of the drug sentences, you had people who were being sentenced to twenty five or life for drug crimes. You'll remember Miss Alice, who changed everybody's mind on this issue when President Trump granted her a commutation and the rest of the world watched her run across the street as a sixty three year old grandmother who had served over twenty years for basically answering the phone and telling somebody where they could buy drugs. We had so many cases like Miss Alice that made such a strong and compelling reason for why people should be allowed that second chance. And then we also expanded the compassionate release, and we've seen a lot of people come home, particularly during COVID from the expanded compassionate release. You've seen some judges some circuits even using it in cases where the person, if they were sentenced today, would not have gotten the same sentence. So if you had somebody who at the time was sentenced to fifty years, but today under the new laws, they would have been sentenced to fifteen. In some circuits, judges have been willing to revisit those cases and re sentence the person.
Hi, this is newt If you live in California or you happen to be visiting, I'd like to invite you to my two upcoming book events in January. Killis and I are both going to be at the Richard Nixon Library and Museum in yor Belunda on January ninth at seven pm. Tickets are available now at Nixonfoundation dot org. And Klist and I are both going to be at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute in Simi Valley on January tenth at five pm. Tickets are available now at Reaganfoundation dot org. I hope you'll join us for a book signing and a talk and a chance to get together and kick off the new year at the Nixon Library and the Reagan Library. Jessica, I think it would really help people understand that when people get out of prison but then are sent back, a process which is called recidivism, that there is a huge gap between what happens with people who've had no preparation, have no real experience, are not prepared and get released and end up going back, and people who having gone through the First Step Act are in fact prepared and therefore have a much smaller likelihood of going back. Could you give us some sense of how big the difference is.
Yes, So, under the First Step Act, according to the data that was published in twenty twenty two, about twenty nine nine and forty six people have been released. Now, normally we'd be looking at a recidivism rate of about forty six percent. However, under the First Step Act, the people who've been coming home. Under the First Step Act, the recidivism rate is twelve point five percent, so just much much lower than it normally would be. And in that twelve point five percent, we know that about four percent of those aren't people committing new crimes. There are people that are getting tripped up on technical violations of their supervision. So overall it's only about eight percent that are committing new crimes compared to the previous forty six percent.
The First Step Act is deeply committed to encouraging people to improve themselves as a way of earning a better future. Can you walk through a little bit about if you're an inmate, what can you do to improve yourself to prepare yourself to go back out into society That fits into the reforms of the First Step Act.
Yeah. Well, one of the things that we know is like the antidote to recidivism is education. So if a person gets their education, that obviously opens up a lot more job opportunities for them. So I would say that the education provisions being able to get real programming inside and access to a real education is probably the most beneficial and probably a part of the reason why we've already seen a drop in recidivism. In fact, First Step Act has not only proved to be the most transformative criminal justice reform, it's also proven to be the toughest on crime reform we've seen, because you're not seeing crime when people come home. In fact, the recidivism rate has dropped significantly by about forty percent down to twelve point five percent of people who are coming home under First Step Act. And that's because they're getting access to these life changing programs. They can take anger management, they can get their mental health issues addressed, they can get substance abuse classes, parenting classes, they get access to education, they get skills training so that they can be placed in a skilled job. There's an expanded workforce within the prison, and they're more volunteers who are coming inside of the prison, so people can build up their network a bit and get jobs when they come home.
This was one of the key things I think that Chuck Holson used to argue that if you give people hope and if you give people an opportunity to rediscover their faith, that they become different people, that you're not dealing with the person who got sentenced, and that therefore you have to really think long and hard about what's the appropriate treatment for somebody who has genuinely been changed in significant ways. Adam, you're one of the examples. You were twenty years into a two hundred and thirteen year sentence when the First Step Act was passed. How did that affect your life?
Pretty significantly? Obviously, I followed the reforms very very closely, and going all the way back to when President Obama entered office, and there was talk of reform that inspired some hope for the future. And I hope everyone understand that individuals who were incarcerated follow these issues very very closely, and even the talk of reform sparked a sense of hope on the inside. For me, I was able to carve out space that I needed to really work on myself, but I also had a community that supported me on the inside. My institution was a little different than the average institution, where I had administrators who were supportive of high level programming like Jessica was talking about. But we also had access to a local university which gave us that higher ed component. So for me, those became transformative components to allow me to do the work on myself. But I watched it transform the lives of all of the men who were incarcerated with me, and as we went on this journey, a multi year journey of improving ourselves, on working toward a future that we envisioned for ourselves. As that legislation was progressing, I could envision myself on the outside and I believed that at some point I was going to get an opportunity. I was going to get that second chance. So even though it did not yet exist, I did the work as if that day was coming. So when it finally did arrive, I was well prepared. I was well prepared not only because of the work that I did in my own life, but because I had the good fortune to be part of a community where I helped countless other men develop their plans for release, and in doing so, it refined mine. So I am an anomaly in the preparation component, having been able to really develop a plan prepare for that release, so that when it came, I was fully prepared to walk out that door, to start a new life, to rejoin not only my family, but my larger community. And I say that there is so much potential that resides behind these walls. And as you said, when people find faith. When they received the education and support that they need and they have hope for a future outside of prison, then they begin to live into their potential and amazing things happen. And that's where we get this reduction in recidivism that we are already seeing the results of that, because it's been many years in the making.
Let me go back for just a second. When you talked about the local university, how did that work? I mean, did they come to you? Did you go to them? How did that process work?
The local university? There was a criminal justice professor by the name of doctor Tony Gasque out of the criminal justice department at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, and he personally had developed a relationship with the facility where the warden had allowed him to come in to bring some college students in. Many of those students ended up being officers, so it was a long standing relationship and for me and others who were part of that core group, we gravitated immediately towards that the opportunity to receive that education. We eagerly accepted it and encouraged an expansion of it, and for a period we were able to get the professor and other professors coming in on a pretty regular basis, and we watched their presence transform the culture in that facility to where it became an environment that was more conducive to learning to introspective analysis, and it impacted not only us, but the staff all of the people who worked there. Ultimately, they saw the benefit of it as well.
When you got out of prison under the First Step Act, how was it different this time from the previous time when you get out of prison?
Great question, As I had mentioned at the onset. When I came out of prison at twenty one years old, having spent three and a half years in a state facility, I had received my GED, spent a little bit of time in a vocational shop, but I didn't have a plan and there was no one there to support me. And if I'm being honest about it, there was some serious underlying issues, substance abuse, some mental health. And I share this that my mother picked me up at twenty one years old and as we were driving away from the facility, tears just began to stream down my face and she looked over at me and said, what's wrong with you? And that was my mother, not knowing how to deal with what she was seeing, and for my part, I didn't know what to do with those emotions that release the underlying issues that had not been addressed, So I went right back to the same substance abuse, to the same issues that ultimately led me to prison in the first time. Difference being while I was in for that twenty years, I received not only the education on how to improve my mental health, I had supportive services, but that environment that I had was very different than what was at that time offered to the masses. The First Step Act has now made those resources widely available, and that's why we're seeing such a dramatic impact on the system.
So when you did get out under the First Step Act, was it easier to get a job?
Yes, But I'm going to say not without challenge. For myself, having been in for twenty years, there were some obvious difficulties that I had adjusting to say the technology. Two decades is a long time. Things had changed pretty dramatically. And had it not been for my wife, who was with me for the final eleven years of that twenty year sentence, to literally hold my hand and walk me through that process and give me all of them emotional and physical support that I needed. I probably would have had even more difficult time. I can't imagine how people navigate that themselves, but employers, for the most part, because of the skill set that I had developed on the inside, because of the self confidence I had developed, I was much better equipped to walk in and to interview and to speak to employers than I had been at any time prior.
So did you meet your wife while you were in prison? I did? Yes, must have led an unusual dating pattern.
Oh, it definitely was. And I'll say this honestly, it was the best thing that ever could have happened, because our relationship had to be built on such strong communication and cultivated nurtured over the years. Our sense of intimacy. My being able to hold her hand in a visit for a few minutes was so significant that that just created such a strong bond. And she is pretty amazing. She's a remarkable woman. So I would not be who I am today without her. And that's why family support is such an essential element of individuals being able to successfully transition back into their families and in their communities.
Absolutely, and I think now seven thousand people have been relocated to a different prison to meet the five hundred miles requirement in First Step Act. So when possible, they have a requirement to make sure people are within five hundred miles of their families so that they can be near them. And I just saw the statistic with seven thousand people have already been moved.
There's a conscious effort to retain some kind of capability to still be bonded beyond the prison and to give you a chance to sustain some kind of relationship. Is that a fair statement, Jessica.
Yes, we know that when you are close to your support structure, you are more likely to succeed. Right if we send somebody off to Siberia and they don't get to talk on the phone because phone calls are expensive, and you know they're writing letters home, but these days people are so used to, you know, just texting somebody back. Maybe sending an email is a lot, or it's expensive, or their family can't come visit them. I literally met somebody whose children hadn't seen her father in eight years because of where he was incarcerated and them not being able to afford flights. So this is going to prove to be very beneficial to also lowering recidivism in the long run, and making sure people have that support they need when they come home.
The Reform Alliance has evolved in ways that have made it a very major impact in terms of trying to reform things. Could you describe for us what the Reform Alliance is doing.
Yes, So, the Reform Alliance is actually focused on probation and parole. It started about a month after we had passed the First Step Act and watch it get signed into law, by the way, which almost didn't happen, not because President Trump had any doubts about it, but because the government almost shut down the day of the signing. About forty five minutes later the government shut down, So we got in there just by the skin of our teeth. But right afterwards, the month after, Reform Alliance was founded to focus on supervision, so parole, probation, community supervision. Because while there are two million people who are incarcerated in this country, there's four and a half million people who are on some form of supervision. And like most people, you know, I initially thought, okay, well, at least they're home with their families, so what if they have to meet with a probation officer at least they're home with their families, but they're subjected to a lot of conditions that don't really make a lot of sense. For example, if I have a felony and I'm on supervision, federal supervision, I can't go to my mom's house and have Christmas dinner. If my brother also has a felony, I couldn't be in the presence of alcohol. I can't open a bank account. I can't even take out a loan to purchase a car to get to work. And by the way, that's a real case that we found. Without getting permission from my probation officer, I can't leave my county to get over to another county just to work or pick up my child from school. So there's so many onerous conditions, and when you violate one of those conditions, it's called a technical violation. So a new crime has not been committed. You've simply been late to a meeting with your probation officer, or you know, not met one of these other conditions, and you can be sent back to prison, which is just astounding to me. In fact, I was shocked. The other day a report came out from the Council on Criminal Justice showing that of the twelve percent of people who came home under First Step Act, which again is historically low, about forty percent lower than anything we've ever seen before. But of that twelve percent, four percent of those folks have gotten back to prison just for breaking one of these technical violations, one of these conditions. So Reform Alliance is focused on changing that. In fact, we have a federal bill which I hope will be the next bipartisan bill that's signed into law.
But you also do a surprising amount of work at the state level.
Yes. In fact, just on Friday, I had the honor of standing next to Governor Shapiro as he signed a bill in Pennsylvania into law that reforms the probation system there and some of these technical violations. Gives people real incentives to earn their way off of probation sooner, and gives them an opportunity to have a probation conference so that they can make a case to the judge that they deserve to come off of probation once other criteria have been met. But that's the eighteenth bill that we've passed in about eleven states, creating pathways for over eight hundred thousand people to get off of supervision.
And if people really want to understand how persistent you are personally and how persistent the reformalized is you worked in the Pennsylvania bill for three or four years? Didn't you four and a half?
But who's counting.
What I'm impressed with is the initial breakthroughs actually came in places like Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, places you wouldn't have expected, and they led the way then to make it much easier to pass the federal bill, and the federal bills now create an environment where you can go back to states for sort of the next wave as well learning. I think you know, I'm very solid conservative. I'm very much in favor of being very very tough on crime, but I'm against being stupid and a lot of the time it's one thing to say, for example, with violent criminals, etc. That there are some people who have records where you clearly are not going to let them out, but they're an amazing number of people who may have made a mistake, but who learn and who change. And this was part of Chuck Colson's whole argument in creating a prison faith based reform system, which was the beginning of the conservative side of this movement was that people can in fact grow and evolve and change, and then you want to find a way to reintegrate them into society because it makes us a stronger and a better country rather than keeping them trapped. And I think what you've been doing at the state level where people learn from each other, and there are different little things that can be done here and there that one state may be doing it right, other states can learn from that state. Ultimately, the Feds can learn from what happens at the state. And it takes something like the Reform Alliance to stay focused on this and to keep working.
On them absolutely. And you know, ninety five percent of the people who are in our prisons are coming home one day, and it's up to us to make sure that they're coming home with the opportunity to be a good neighbor to you, that they're coming home with an opportunity to work. They're coming home with an opportunity to move on and be a part of a community and even give back the way that Adam and his wife are. So it's up to us to make sure that these things are in place. If we just put people in cages and throw away the key, and then suddenly one day they have to come home and figure out how to reintegrate on their own. And we keep them out of housing and out of jobs, and out of mental health services and out of education, we can't expect them to succeed. So criminal justice reform is really more public safety reform, right, We're really trying to make sure that we're keeping the community safe by giving people tools to succe.
Seed Jessica and Adam, I want to thank both of you for joining me to discuss the sort of anniversary. It's a remarkable time and five years later, it's clearly had a huge positive impact. I want to encourage people to go to Reformalliance dot com where they can learn just about the first STEPACK, but also about the other kind of projects that the Reform Alliance is doing. And I want to thank both of you for being with us to have this discussion.
Thank you so much for having us on and for all of your work.
Yes, thank you.
Thank you to my guest Jessica Jackson and Adam Clausener. You can learn more about Reform Alliance on our show page at newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld is produced by Gang with three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guernsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team English three sixty. If you've been enjoying nuts World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of newts World consign up from my three freeweekly columns at Gingwishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich. This is neuts World
