Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

THE PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hoeven). Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?

The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 52, nays 43, as follows: [Rollcall Vote No. 65 Leg.] YEAS--52 Alexander Ayotte Barrasso Blunt Boozman Burr Capito Cassidy Coats Cochran Collins Corker Cornyn Cotton Crapo Daines Donnelly Enzi Ernst Flake Gardner Graham Grassley Hatch Heitkamp Hoeven Inhofe Isakson Kirk Lankford Manchin McCain McConnell Menendez Moran Murkowski Paul Perdue Portman Risch Roberts Rounds Rubio Scott Sessions Shelby Sullivan Thune Tillis Toomey Vitter Wicker NAYS--43 Baldwin Bennet Blumenthal Brown Cantwell Cardin Carper Casey Coons Durbin Feinstein Fischer Franken Gillibrand Heinrich Heller Hirono Kaine King Klobuchar Leahy Lee Markey McCaskill Merkley Mikulski Murphy Murray Nelson Peters Reed Reid Sasse Schatz Schumer Shaheen Stabenow Tester Udall Warner Warren Whitehouse Wyden NOT VOTING--5 Booker Boxer Cruz Johnson Sanders
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, there are a lot of divisions on Capitol Hill, and the press spends a lot of time reporting differences between Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate. I think that is one of the reasons the press conference I just left is noteworthy, because at this press conference, we had equal numbers of Democratic Senators and Republican Senators talking about a bill that we hope to move forward on the floor of the Senate. The bill relates to criminal justice reform.

I am pleased to cosponsor this legislation with Senator Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. We are proud to have the support as well of Senator Leahy and Senator Mike Lee of Utah, who was one of the original authors of this bill 3 years ago when we both introduced it. We also have the support of the Republican whip, John Cornyn of Texas; Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island; and many others who have joined this effort.

What is it about this bill that could bring people together who are so different--liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans? It is a common belief that we bring to this that at this moment in history, we need to take an honest look at the incarceration policy in America.

The United States of America has 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's prisoners. Over the last 35 years, we have increased the number of Federal prisoners by anywhere from 800 percent to 900 percent. We are building Federal prisons as fast as you can imagine, and they are dramatically overcrowded.

It raises the obvious question: Are we safer? If we spend $30,000 a year to incarcerate a person, take them off the streets and away from their family, are we safer because of it? In some cases, we clearly are. Our first obligation is public safety. If someone is a threatening, deadly, violent criminal, they ought to be taken off the streets as long as they are a menace or a danger to society. But the largest increase in the Federal prison population during the period I just described is for nonviolent offenders, people who have sold drugs in America.

The problem is made worse because we decided 25 or 30 years ago to create mandatory minimum sentences. What it meant was that when the judge sentenced someone, there was an absolute floor they couldn't go below regardless of the circumstances. Needless to say, that resulted in the miscarriage of justice in many cases.

Sadly, it isn't just a matter of longer sentences. We have seen some disparities and injustice that we have to be very honest about, as painful as it is to describe them. For instance, the majority of illegal drug users and drug dealers in America are White. Three- quarters of all the people incarcerated for drug offenses are African American and Latino, and the large majority of those who are being sentenced under mandatory minimum sentences are African American and Latino.

Let's be very honest about this. In my State of Illinois, I have to be because in the city of Chicago and other communities, we are going through a very candid and painful discussion about the issues of race and justice. We have to be honest. We are incarcerating minorities in this country at dramatically higher percentages than we should. The reason I say that goes back to the original point: The majority of illegal drug users and sellers in America are White; three-quarters of those in prison are not.

As a result of mandatory minimums, the families of nonviolent offenders are separated for years on end, and a disproportionate number of them are people of color. This is destroying communities, damaging and destroying families, and, sadly, eroding faith in our criminal justice system.

In 2010 I worked with Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. He is a very conservative Republican but one of my colleagues and friends on the Senate Judiciary Committee. We passed the Fair Sentencing Act. You see, we had a disparity in sentencing so that those who were found guilty of selling and using crack cocaine were sentenced at 100 times the standard of powder cocaine. There was a reason for it, but it turned out not to be valid. Yet for years this was the standard. We were filling our prisons primarily with African Americans on crack offenses, and if they were repeat offenders--three times and you are out, three strikes and you are out--they could be sentenced for long periods of time.

Senator Sessions and I decided to change it. We reduced the disparity between crack and powder, and we have seen a dramatic downturn not only in those serving times for crack cocaine offenses and selling them but also the arrests that are being made today.

This bill we just announced in a press conference--the latest version and I think a good version--is another step forward. It will give judges more discretion in sentencing below the mandatory minimum on an individual case-by-case basis.

A young man whom I have come to know is Alton Mills. Alton is from Chicago, IL. In the year 1994 at the age of 24, Alton Mills was given a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole for a low-level, nonviolent drug offense. This man had never served 1 day in prison in his life, and at age 24 he received a life acceptance. I appealed to President Obama to use his Executive authority to give Alton Mills another chance. Just before Christmas last year, the President commuted his sentence, and Alton Mills was released after 22 years in Federal prison.

He was there today in a meeting we had with his mom. She never gave up on him. She was the one who appealed to me initially to take a look at her son's case. His attorney, a dynamic African-American woman named MiAngel Cody, really closed the deal as she described this case in detail and how unfortunate it was that a 24-year-old man would receive a life sentence for low-level, nonviolent drug offenses.

He is not alone. There are hundreds more just like him serving mandatory life sentences for third-strike sentences. The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, which Senator Grassley and I have introduced, would eliminate this mandatory life sentence. This change alone would change the sentencing for many who are currently serving in Federal prisons.

The bill was reported out of the Judiciary Committee in its original form by a vote of 15 to 5--a good, strong vote. We have picked up an additional number of Republican sponsors since we have made some other changes in the bill. I thank Senator Lee for joining me in initially introducing this bill.

There are so many people who are counting on this legislation, not just those families who have someone serving time in prison but many people across the board--Black, White, and Brown--who want to see us restore faith in the system of criminal justice.

We had an amazing endorsement of our bill.

Hon. Mitch McConnell, Majority Leader, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC. Hon. Harry Reid, Democratic Leader, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.

Dear Majority Leader McConnell and Democratic Leader Reid: On behalf of the National District Attorneys Association (NDAA), the largest prosecutor organization representing 2500 elected and appointed District Attorneys across the United States as well as 30,000 assistant district attorneys, I write in support of S. 2123, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015. As a result of months of changes and good faith negotiations, our organization feels the latest version of the bill strikes the appropriate balance between targeting the highest level drug traffickers plaguing our communities, while simultaneously decreasing crime rates and addressing the burgeoning prison population.

America's federal, state, local and tribal prosecutors have as their primary responsibility the administration of justice. Everyday, prosecutors have to make tough judgment calls. Sometimes, that judgment call involves locking up individuals for a long period of time for a heinous crime that damaged a community. More often, we work hard to provide second chances and concerted efforts are made to rehabilitate an individual with the goal of reducing the chance that he or she will reoffend back into the system.

As we have seen from the cost curve published by the National Academy of Sciences, the current prison population is simply unsustainable and continues to have a greater and greater impact on broader funding and programming at the Department of Justice. Budget aside, communities across this country have shifted to embrace rehabilitation and the opinion that certain individuals in our federal prison system are serving sentences that are too long compared to the crime they committed. This legislation aims to strike the appropriate balance of time served and the relevant crime by modifying the three strikes rule for drug felonies, with a third strike now carrying a 25-year penalty as opposed to life, and second strike carrying a 15-year sentence instead of 20 years. Appropriately so, the bill expands the three strikes rule to apply to serious violent felonies, ensuring that we use prison for those we are afraid of, not those whom we are mad at based on their behavior.

One previous concern our members highlighted was the retroactive nature of many provisions in the original bill. The new version takes into account that concern by limiting the retroactivity where applicable if an individual's record contains any serious violent felony. We feel this filters out the truly dangerous individuals who should stay out of the community, while allowing lower level offenders a chance for redemption.

Our members also realize that as we see the same offenders reenter the criminal justice system time and time again, we must be creative and come up with innovative programs to reduce recidivism, including job training skills, addiction counseling and other productive activities. According to a report primarily authored by the National Center for State Courts, ``properly designed and operated recidivism-reduction programs can significantly reduce offender recidivism. Such programs are more effective, and more cost-effective, than incarceration in reducing crime rates.''

As part of the broader legislation, the Corrections Act requires the development of a risk assessment tool that will categorize inmates based on their risk of recidivism and subsequently determine which types of programming are most tailored to that individual's needs and risks. This is an important step in targeting at risk populations and providing the necessary resources to rehabilitate those individuals with the eventual goal of returning to our communities as productive citizens. At the same time, appropriate parameters are set for who is eligible to earn good time credit for completion of the recidivism reduction programming in order to keep the most dangerous and high-risk individuals from being eligible for early release to community supervision and off the streets.

We are especially appreciative of the provision in the legislation requiring an annual report by the Attorney General outlining how savings accrued from modifications to federal sentencing will be reinvested into efforts by federal, state and local prosecutors and law enforcement to go after drug traffickers and gangs, as well as provide the necessary training and tools needed to carry out investigations, keep officers safe, and ensure successful programming and initiatives are duplicated across communities in the form of best practices. Unfortunately, as the Bureau of Prison's (BOP) budget has continued to rise, funding for state and local law enforcement grants has been slashed to the bone negatively impacting innovative work in the field including diversion programs, updating of information sharing systems, and hot spot policing. This language is an acknowledgement that vital funding streams to prosecutors and law enforcement must be restored to protect the communities we serve.

The members of NDAA are acutely aware that our federal partners need to have the ability to allocate resources to state prosecutors to help combat human trafficking, domestic violence, the scourge of prescription drug addiction, and so many other ills that plague our communities. Absent meaningful sentencing reform, where the truly dangerous are locked up for an appropriate period of time and those with addiction or mental health issues have the chance for treatment and rehabilitation, those needed resources will not exist.

We applaud the bipartisan leadership of the Senators and staff who have spent considerable time working on this compromise legislation. Their tireless efforts have included open and transparent communication with our organization and members, which has not gone unnoticed. We look forward to working with both of you and other Senators and staff in the weeks ahead to move this bipartisan legislation forward. Respectfully, William Fitzpatrick, President, National District Attorneys Association.

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Mr. DURBIN. The National District Attorneys Association, which is the largest group of criminal prosecutors in America, has endorsed our criminal justice reform bill. We have brought together an incredible coalition. I am proud to have not only the civil rights community, but we also have others from the conservative side, such as Michael Mukasey, former Attorney General. Everyone knows him to be a tough prosecutor. He endorses our bill. Others have come forward. They understand that it is time to step back and take an honest look at where we are today.

This criminal justice reform bill will bring some sanity to our corrections system, and it will save us money. Roughly one-fourth of the Department of Justice appropriations now goes into prisons. By the year 2030, it will be 30 percent. As Senator Lee said, we are spending more money on prisons than we are spending in the Department of Justice on the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration combined.

What if we could reduce that prison population in a responsible, sensible way that doesn't endanger public safety but gives us resources that could be used by the Department of Justice for law enforcement, for dealing with the heroin epidemic across America and making our neighborhoods truly safe? What if we could take part of that and invest it in the lives of young people before they turn to gangs, before they turn to drugs, and before they turn to guns? That could literally change the face of a great city such as Chicago and the great Nation we live in.

This is a historic bill--not just because Democrats and Republicans have come to support it; it is historic because we are tackling one of the toughest issues of our time. We are doing it in a thoughtful, careful, bipartisan, and respectful manner. I happen to believe that is what the Senate should be all about.

I look forward to encouraging my colleagues who have not signed on as cosponsors to do so as quickly as possible.

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