The First Step Act: Sentencing and Prison Reform Explained

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

The First Step Act of 2018 was the most significant federal criminal justice reform in a generation. It changed how some federal sentences are calculated, how time in prison can be reduced through earned credits, and how a motion for compassionate release can be brought. For people currently serving federal sentences — and for those facing sentencing — the First Step Act opened real opportunities that did not exist before.

At Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C., First Step Act work runs through both our post-conviction and sentencing practices. Principal attorney Elizabeth Franklin-Best — a 2026 Best Lawyers in America “Best Lawyer” honoree in Appellate Practice, ranked by Chambers USA in its 2026 guide for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations, and the author of Reversing Your Criminal Conviction — handles the courtroom side. She has appeared in more than 330 federal proceedings across the country, and resentencing and sentence-reduction litigation is a core part of that record: her practice includes First Step Act § 404 resentencings, active Amendment 821 and compassionate-release motions, and the landmark resentencing decision in Aiken v. Byars, 410 S.C. 534, 765 S.E.2d 572 (2014), where she served as counsel. Managing Director Christopher Zoukis, a recognized authority on the federal prison system, supplies particular depth on the Act’s corrections-side reforms — the PATTERN scoring and earned-credit machinery where much of the Act’s practical value is realized.

This guide explains the First Step Act — what it did, the earned time credits, the sentencing reforms, the change to compassionate release, what is retroactive and what is not, and how to think about whether the Act can help a particular case. If you or a loved one is serving or facing a federal sentence, the First Step Act may be relevant, and counsel can assess how.

Quick Answer

Question	Answer
What is the First Step Act?	A federal criminal justice reform law enacted in December 2018 that changed federal sentencing and prison policy on multiple fronts.
What are earned time credits?	Credits eligible prisoners earn by completing recidivism-reduction programming, which can be applied toward earlier prerelease custody or supervised release.
Did the Act change compassionate release?	Yes. It allowed defendants, for the first time, to file their own compassionate-release motions with the court after exhausting Bureau of Prisons remedies.
Is the First Step Act retroactive?	Partly. Some provisions — like the retroactive Fair Sentencing Act — reach people already sentenced; others, such as the safety-valve expansion, apply prospectively.
Who is eligible for earned time credits?	Many federal prisoners, but the statute excludes those convicted of certain offenses, and risk classification affects how credits are applied.
Where do we start?	With a paid, one-hour initial consultation that runs the provision-by-provision checklist — credits, § 404 eligibility, compassionate release, and sentencing reforms.

Key Takeaways

• The First Step Act of 2018 was the most significant federal criminal justice reform in a generation.
• It works on two fronts — sentencing reforms and corrections reforms.
• Earned time credits let eligible prisoners reduce time in custody by completing recidivism-reduction programming.
• The Act clarified good conduct time so eligible prisoners receive up to 54 days of credit per year of the sentence imposed.
• Sentencing reforms include a broadened safety valve, 924(c) stacking reform, and reduced enhanced drug penalties.
• Earned credits accrue at 10–15 days per 30 days of programming, and applying them turns on the PATTERN risk score and the § 3632(d)(4)(D) exclusion list.
• Terry defines who is eligible for a § 404 crack reduction; Concepcion defines what the court may consider in deciding one.
• The Act allowed defendants to file their own compassionate-release motions for the first time.
• Not all provisions are retroactive — the Fair Sentencing Act was made retroactive, but some reforms apply prospectively.
• Whether the Act helps a case depends on the specific provision and the timing of the offense and sentence.

What Is the First Step Act?

The First Step Act is a federal law enacted in December 2018. It is a broad criminal justice reform statute, and it works on two fronts at once: the sentencing side and the corrections side.

On the sentencing side, the Act made several changes to federal sentencing law — broadening the safety valve, reforming the way certain firearm penalties stack, reducing some enhanced drug penalties, and making an earlier crack-cocaine sentencing reform retroactive. On the corrections side, the Act created a system of earned time credits, addressed good conduct time, and changed how compassionate release motions can be brought.

Because the First Step Act touches so many different things, the key practical question is always specific: which provisions, if any, apply to this person and this case? The Act is not a single benefit but a collection of distinct reforms, each with its own eligibility rules. The sections that follow explain the major provisions.

Earned Time Credits

One of the most significant corrections reforms in the First Step Act is the system of earned time credits — sometimes called First Step Act Time Credits.

Under 18 U.S.C. § 3632(d)(4), an eligible prisoner earns 10 days of time credits for every 30 days of successful participation in evidence-based recidivism reduction programming or productive activities — and a prisoner assessed at minimum or low risk over two consecutive assessments earns an additional 5 days, for 15 days per 30. Credits are applied toward earlier placement in prerelease custody — a residential reentry center or home confinement — or toward an earlier start of supervised release, with the supervised-release transfer capped at 12 months of credit.

The system has hard limits. Section 3632(d)(4)(D) lists dozens of disqualifying convictions — including many violent, terrorism, sex, and certain firearm and drug offenses — and a prisoner serving a sentence for a listed offense cannot earn the credits at all. Most white-collar convictions are not on the exclusion list. A prisoner subject to a final order of removal can earn credits but cannot apply them toward release. Application also depends on risk classification: under § 3624(g), credits are applied when the prisoner has earned credits equal to the remainder of the sentence and holds a minimum or low PATTERN score on the last two reassessments — though the warden can approve application for medium- and high-risk prisoners in defined circumstances. When the BOP refuses to award or apply credits correctly, the dispute can be litigated through a § 2241 habeas petition after administrative exhaustion.

Applied Insight: Earned time credits are an area where errors in calculation are not unusual. The release-date math depends on eligibility, risk classification, program completion, and how credits are applied — and mistakes can cost real time. For an incarcerated person, having counsel review how the Bureau of Prisons has calculated First Step Act credits can be worth significant time on a sentence.

PATTERN Scores and Why They Matter

The Act directed the Department of Justice to build a risk and needs assessment system, and the result is PATTERN — the Prisoner Assessment Tool Targeting Estimated Risk and Needs. PATTERN assigns every federal prisoner a recidivism-risk score of minimum, low, medium, or high, reassessed periodically, and it identifies the criminogenic needs that drive program assignments.

The score is not academic. It sets the earning rate for time credits, controls whether earned credits can be applied toward prerelease custody or supervised release, and shapes programming priority. A prisoner whose PATTERN score is driven up by stale or incorrect inputs — an old conviction misclassified, a disciplinary entry that was overturned — can lose the practical benefit of months of completed programming. Reviewing the inputs behind a PATTERN score, and pressing the BOP to correct them, is unglamorous work that directly moves release dates.

Good Conduct Time

Separate from the earned-time-credit system, the First Step Act addressed good conduct time — the credit a prisoner receives for good behavior while incarcerated.

Good conduct time is a long-standing feature of federal sentences. The First Step Act amended 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b) so that eligible prisoners receive up to 54 days of credit for each year of the sentence imposed — not each year actually served, the reading under which the BOP had effectively capped the credit at 47 days per year. The recalculation is retroactive for qualifying prisoners and restored roughly a week per year across an entire sentence.

Good conduct time and First Step Act earned time credits are different things — good conduct time is for good behavior, while earned time credits are for completing recidivism-reduction programming. Both affect when a person is released, and both should be confirmed as correctly calculated.

The Sentencing Reforms

On the sentencing side, the First Step Act made several reforms that are most relevant to defendants being sentenced after the Act and, in one important respect, to certain people already serving sentences.

• The safety valve. The Act broadened the criminal history eligibility for the statutory safety valve, allowing more non-violent drug defendants to be sentenced below a mandatory minimum. In Pulsifer v. United States, 601 U.S. 124 (2024), the Supreme Court read the expanded criminal-history test as a checklist of independent disqualifiers — having any one of them defeats eligibility.
• Firearm penalty stacking. The Act reformed the “stacking” of penalties under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), so that the dramatically escalated penalty for a second or subsequent conviction generally applies only where the prior conviction was already final.
• Enhanced drug penalties. The Act reduced certain enhanced mandatory minimum penalties that apply to drug offenses based on prior convictions, and adjusted the prior convictions that trigger them.
• The Fair Sentencing Act made retroactive. The Act made the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 — which reduced the disparity between crack and powder cocaine penalties — retroactive, allowing eligible prisoners sentenced under the older law to seek a reduced sentence.

These reforms are addressed in more detail in our guides to mandatory minimum sentences and the safety valve. The crucial point is that whether a sentencing reform helps a particular person depends on the offense, the timing, and — as discussed next — whether the provision is retroactive.

Crack Retroactivity Under Section 404

Section 404 is the Act’s true retroactive sentencing provision, and two Supreme Court decisions define its shape. Terry v. United States, 593 U.S. 486 (2021), drew the eligibility line: a “covered offense” is one whose statutory penalties the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 actually modified — crack offenses carrying mandatory minimums under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A) and (B) (and the parallel import provisions). Low-level convictions under § 841(b)(1)(C), whose zero-to-twenty-year range never changed, are not covered, though career-offender status does not by itself disqualify anyone.

For those who are eligible, Concepcion v. United States, 597 U.S. 481 (2022), governs the merits: the district court recalculates the Guidelines range as if the Fair Sentencing Act had applied at the original sentencing, and may then consider intervening changes of law and fact — Guidelines amendments, post-sentencing rehabilitation, disciplinary history — in deciding what reduction, if any, to grant. The court must consider the parties’ nonfrivolous arguments, but relief remains discretionary. One structural caution: § 404(c) bars a motion if the sentence was already imposed or reduced under the Fair Sentencing Act, or if a prior § 404 motion was denied on the merits — so the first motion needs to be the best one.

The Change to Compassionate Release

One of the most consequential and far-reaching changes in the First Step Act concerned compassionate release — a reduction in sentence based on extraordinary and compelling reasons under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A).

Before the First Step Act, only the Bureau of Prisons could file a motion for compassionate release. In practice, the Bureau filed such motions rarely, which meant the remedy was largely unavailable even to people with compelling circumstances. The First Step Act changed this. It allowed defendants, for the first time, to file their own motions for compassionate release directly with the sentencing court — after first asking the warden, and then either exhausting the Bureau’s administrative process or waiting 30 days from the warden’s receipt of the request.

This change transformed compassionate release from a rarely used provision into a meaningful and actively litigated avenue of relief. The mechanics — what counts as “extraordinary and compelling reasons,” the § 1B1.13 policy statement, and how to build the motion — are covered in our dedicated guide to federal compassionate release. The essential point here is simpler: the modern compassionate-release motion exists because of the First Step Act.

What Is Retroactive and What Is Not

One of the most important — and most misunderstood — features of the First Step Act is that not all of its provisions are retroactive. Whether a reform reaches a person already sentenced depends on the specific provision.

The Act’s retroactivity of the Fair Sentencing Act is a true retroactive provision: eligible prisoners sentenced before 2010 for covered crack-cocaine offenses can seek a reduced sentence. The earned-time-credit and good-conduct-time provisions apply to people currently incarcerated, and the compassionate-release change opened that avenue to everyone serving a sentence. But several of the sentencing reforms — including the safety-valve expansion and the § 924(c) stacking reform — were generally written to apply prospectively, to offenses or sentences after the Act, rather than to reopen sentences already imposed. The line moved in Hewitt v. United States, 606 U.S. 419 (2025), though: when a pre-Act sentence has been vacated, the Act’s reduced § 924(c) penalties apply at the post-Act resentencing, because once vacated, no sentence “has been imposed” within the meaning of the Act.

The practical lesson is that “the First Step Act” is not a single retroactive benefit. Whether a particular provision helps a particular person turns on the precise reform at issue and the timing of the offense and sentence. That analysis should be done by counsel familiar with the Act’s provisions.

How the Act Can Help a Case

For all its complexity, the First Step Act can help in concrete ways. The key is to identify which provisions reach a given situation.

For a person currently incarcerated, the Act can mean earlier release through correctly calculated earned time credits and good conduct time, an avenue to compassionate release that did not exist before, and — for those eligible — a reduced sentence under the retroactive Fair Sentencing Act. For a person being sentenced now, the Act’s safety-valve expansion and other reforms can directly affect the sentence. And for families, understanding the Act can clarify what is realistically possible and what is not.

A First Step Act review, then, is really a review of several distinct possibilities at once. It asks: are the Bureau of Prisons’ credit calculations correct? Is this person eligible for a retroactive Fair Sentencing Act reduction? Has the avenue to compassionate release been considered? Each is a separate question, and a thorough review addresses all of them.

How Our Firm Uses the First Step Act

We treat the First Step Act as a checklist to run on every file, sentencing or post-conviction. Elizabeth Franklin-Best handles the litigation side — § 404 motions, compassionate release, and sentencing advocacy under the amended statutes — while Christopher Zoukis’s command of BOP practice covers PATTERN scoring, programming assignments, and credit application, the corrections side where most First Step Act value is actually won or lost.

Our First Step Act work includes reviewing how the Bureau of Prisons has calculated earned time credits and good conduct time, evaluating eligibility for a retroactive Fair Sentencing Act sentence reduction, advising on the compassionate-release avenue the Act opened, and applying the Act’s sentencing reforms in cases being sentenced now. We give clients a candid, provision-by-provision assessment. Admitted before the United States Supreme Court and all twelve federal circuits and appearing pro hac vice from Montana to Florida, we represent federal defendants and prisoners nationwide.

For related reading, see our federal post-conviction relief overview and our guides to sentence reductions and the safety valve.

Talk With a Federal Lawyer

The First Step Act opened real opportunities — but it is a collection of distinct reforms, each with its own eligibility rules and its own retroactivity question. Determining what the Act can do for a particular case requires a careful, provision-by-provision review.

In a paid, one-hour initial consultation, we run the full First Step Act checklist against your case — the credit math, § 404 eligibility, the compassionate-release avenue, and any sentencing-side provisions — and tell you candidly which doors are open and which are closed. If you or a loved one is serving a federal sentence, that review is the right place to start.