The Missouri House has approved a massive Omnibus Crime Bill which is adopts many of ideals of the First Step Act and includes more measures that could potentially affect Missouri:

• Free feminine hygiene for incarcerated women
• sentencing reform for mandatory minimums for non-violent offender
• Parole for people who are at least 65 years old and have served 30 years of their sentence
• eliminating debtor prisons for board bills
• Allowing felons to work in grocery and convenience stores
• updating to racial profiling statutes
• civil asset forfeiture reform

This proposed legislation could save the state of Missouri millions of dollars yearly in modified minimum prison term provisions.

The federal First-Step Act is a directive to the U.S. Department of Justice to establish a system to assess the risk of a person to committing the crime again as well as to create housing or others incentives for offenders to participate in recidivism reduction programs.

The Bill passed the U.S. Senate which ends the years of negotiations. This was a signature victory for the Trump Administration. The new law has been praised by both parties. Federal judges will now be given more leeway for their discretion when sentencing certain drug offenders and the law allowing 2,600 people serving crack/cocaine offenses the opportunity to petition the judge for reduced sentence.

Prisoners also get seven additional days of credit for good behavior each year that they have been in prison, the credits being reduced from their sentence to allow for an earlier release.