Criminal justice reform bill headed for vote after McConnell comes off fence

A criminal justice reform bill with broad bipartisan support will receive a vote before the end of the current Senate session, in a major legislative victory for both progressive reform advocates and Donald Trump, who has thrown his weight behind the legislation.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell announced Tuesday that he would bring the First Step Act for a vote as early as the end of the week. The bill reportedly has enough votes to defeat a filibuster and pass, but McConnell, who has total control over what votes get scheduled, had been wavering until his Tuesday announcement.

He may have finally come off the fence after pressure from Trump who, during a White House meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, said it “looks like it is going to be passing” and in a “very bipartisan way”.

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The act, which applies to federal prisoners only, would expand rehabilitative opportunities, reduce mandatory minimum sentences for a number of drug-related crimes, and ban some of the most startling correctional practices, such as the shackling of pregnant women.

Jessica Jackson-Sloan, the national director for reform advocacy group Cut50, lamented the bill’s rightward swing in order to placate conservatives but celebrated that “this is still the most substantial rewrite of the nation’s sentencing and prison reform laws that has happened in decades”.

First Step passed the House in May as a prison reform bill that did not contain any language to reduce sentencing length – which was considered politically toxic to many House Republicans.