December 17, 2018 

For Immediate Release

Statement of Prince George’s County Council Member At-Large Mel Franklin in Support of the First Step Act

Contact: Mel@melfranklin.net

Upper Marlboro, MD – Today, Prince George’s County Council Member At-Large Mel Franklin (D-Upper Marlboro) issued the following statement in support of Senate Bill 2795, known as the “First Step Act,” criminal justice reform legislation pending today before the United States Senate:

“The First Step Act would provide meaningful, bipartisan progress from the federal government towards reducing repeat offenses by returning citizens and reducing our prison population, making all of us safer.  The more that our citizens returning from incarceration can find workforce training, employment, and a productive place in our society, the less likely they are to re-offend and return to prison, creating new victims in the process. I urge Congress, including our Maryland members of the U.S. Senate and House, to expeditiously pass this law without weakening it.”

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More about the First Step Act (S.B. 2795) – Information provided by the 20/20 Bipartisan Justice Center (www.2020club.org)

The First Step Act makes retroactive the reforms enacted by the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which reduced the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences at the federal level, affecting nearly 2,600 federal inmates. It also allows well-behaved inmates to cut their prison sentence by an additional week for each year they’re incarcerated. The change applies retroactively, which could allow as many as 4,000 federal prisoners to qualify for release the day that the bill goes into effect. The bill allows inmates to get “earned time credits” by participating in more vocational and rehabilitative programs. Those credits would allow them to be released early to halfway houses or home confinement. And the bill bans the shackling of women during childbirth and provides women prisoners with essential sanitary products and requires that inmates are placed closer to their families.