Almost one year after President Trump signed the FIRST STEP Act, criminal justice reform advocate Van Jones discussed next steps with activists and formerly incarcerated individuals.
When Lonnie Jones initially learned of the FIRST STEP Act, he was serving a life sentence in federal prison.
So far, he had served 20 years of his sentence for a first-time, non-violent drug offense. He said his fellow inmates either believed that nothing was going to come from the FIRST STEP Act or that everything was going to change.
Among the many provisions in the bill, the federal prison and sentencing reform bill aimed to help people in Lonnie Jones’ exact situation—those given lengthy sentences for non-violent drug offences because of mandatory minimum sentencing—but he was convinced that the FIRST STEP Act didn’t apply to him despite people telling him that it did because the appeals he previously filed had been denied.
“I got a letter from the federal [public] defender’s office saying I might be eligible—I ripped it up,” Lonnie Jones said. “God’s honest truth, I ripped it up.”
It wasn’t until a lawyer contacted him directly and explained how the act does impact him that he started to believe it, and when he got a new court date, he started to feel some joy. Once a judge ruled that the life sentence he was given was excessive for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense, he said he began to understand why the other people in prison were so “jubilant” at the news of the FIRST STEP Act being signed into law.
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Briahnna M. Brown 