This new AP piece, headlined “Barr: Justice Dept. is ‘all in’ on criminal justice overhaul,” provides another notable report on the work of Justice Department officials as the next stage of FIRST STEP Act implementation is set to get started. Here are excerpts:

On a visit this past week to Edgefield — a facility with a medium-security prison and minimum-security camp — Attorney General William Barr took a firsthand look at some of the programs in place, from computer skills to cooking, auto mechanic training and factory work. He met with prison staff and a handful of inmates, including some who will be released early under the First Step Act.

Barr’s visit signaled a major policy shift since his first stint as attorney general in the early 1990s, when he exuded a tough-on-crime approach, advocating for more severe penalties, building more prisons and using laws to keep some criminals behind bars longer. Barr has said he will fully support and carry out the law….

During a tour that lasted nearly three hours, Barr also met with a prison psychologist, inmates who act as mentors in faith and drug-treatment programs, and with instructors who help prisoners create resumes and participate in job fairs. Passing through the narrow hallways, Barr peeked through the windows of some classrooms where inmates were completing computer skills and GED programs. In one room, where older computers and typewriters lined the walls, Barr chatted about re-entry programs and heard from mentors who teach their fellow inmates how to prepare for the job interviews.

But some of the prison’s programs — like the culinary arts and auto repair programs — tend to be very popular among inmates and have wait lists. As he walked through Edgefield, Barr told Hugh Hurwitz, the acting director of the Bureau of Prisons, they needed to make sure there were enough programs available to a wide swath of inmates. “We’re focusing on building on the programs, the re-entry programs we need, and getting the funding to do it,” Barr said in an interview this past week with The Associated Press….

The Justice Department has been working to meet the deadlines set by Congress for the First Step Act and is expected to unveil a risk-assessment tool this week that will help to evaluate federal inmates and ultimately could speed up their release. Barr said the Justice Department and the Bureau of Prisons are both “all in in terms of making it work.”

“I’m impressed with how it’s going,” Barr said of the First Step Act’s implementation. “While there are a few things I probably would have done a little bit different, I generally support the thrust of the First Step Act.”