Traumatic Brain Injury Program Reauthorization Act of 2018

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the Senate has before it a bill called the FIRST STEP Act. The name is significant because it shows that this is not a comprehensive fix for the problems of our criminal justice system but, rather, a first, critical step in the right direction.

A study by the U.S. Sentencing Commission found that nearly half of the people released from Federal prison in 2005 were arrested again in the next 8 years--half of the people released from Federal prison since 2005 were rearrested within 8 years.

Considering that 95 percent of State and Federal prisoners at some point will be released, those odds are pretty bleak, but here is the reality: Almost everybody in prison will serve their time and get out of prison. The question for us is, Will they be better prepared to live life on the outside in a productive way or will they simply reengage in a turnstile--or as one gentleman referred to himself in Houston, TX, a few years ago when we were talking about this issue--he called himself a frequent flyer in the criminal justice system.

Unfortunately, we see that in the Federal system, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, half of the people repeat their mistakes within 8 years. This is bleak but not hopeless because we know there are reforms that will work that help improve the chances that more people will be able to live a lawful life productively outside a prison system and will not reoffend.

We have seen these changes implemented across the country at the State level, including my home State of Texas, which has yielded incredible results. This might cause some people a little bit of a shock because Texas, of course, has a reputation for being tough on crime. People don't run for public office saying: I am going to be soft on crime in Texas and get elected. But what we have seen is that people have said: I think we can be smarter about crime and produce better results at a lower cost. That message and those things that have followed have been enormously successful. So let me talk about that a little bit.

In Texas, the initial interest in criminal justice reform was first cost-driven. In other words, people were wondering: How are we going to continue to pay for 17,000 more prison beds that we think we are going to need because of our growing population? The growing prison population was simply outpacing the corrections budget, so State legislators were faced with a very difficult financial choice. But as it turned out, the reforms that we adopted did a lot more than alleviate the budget strain on the criminal justice system.

Using recidivism reduction programs, including job training and vocational education, we reduced our incarceration rate and our crime rate by double digits at the same time.

So using the sorts of recidivism reduction programs that are included in the FIRST STEP Act at the State level, we were able to reduce our incarceration rate and our crime rate by double digits at the same time.

I remember a few years ago, when former Attorney General Michael Mukasey testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he said that the single most important measurement of whether the sentencing practices are working is the crime rate--the crime rate. This was at a time when people were talking about ``Well, we put too many people in prison, so we have to let some out,'' but they weren't paying attention to how that impacted the crime rate.

That stuck with me over these many years because I think he is exactly right. If these programs do not protect the public safety, then we shouldn't be doing them. If they don't lower the crime rate, they are not worth the effort. But our experience in Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Rhode Island--in places that have implemented these programs, they have seen their incarceration rate and their crime rate drop at the same time. So we are trying to replicate those successes at the Federal level through the FIRST STEP Act.

In so doing, we hope to allow people to transform their lives as we allow low-risk offenders to lead productive lives in their communities once they leave prison, assuming they comply with all of the rules and regulations. I believe this legislation will lead the way for additional steps that we will take afterward, but this is an important first step.

This bill will provide funding for the Federal Bureau of Prisons to develop risk assessment tools to pair individuals with programs proven to reduce the risk of recidivism.

This isn't just social engineering or some hope that we have. This is based on proven examples of programs that will help people, for example, deal with their drug or their alcohol addiction.

Senator Cassidy from Louisiana has put in this bill some very important provisions relating to the diagnosis and treatment of people with dyslexia.

I am convinced that there are people in prison who were told as they were growing up that they were too stupid to go to school because they couldn't read, and they simply dropped out, and their dyslexia, which was holding them back, was not diagnosed and properly treated. So I am grateful to Senator Cassidy for some of the provisions in the bill relating to the identification of people with dyslexia and providing them access to programs that will help them learn and succeed and improve their lives and, at the same time, reduce the likelihood that they will end up back in prison after having been arrested again.

By spending time in prison, completing evidence-based programming, as I have mentioned--education, job training, drug treatment, life skills, faith-based programs--we can give people an opportunity to prepare themselves for their transition to life after prison.

This is because the incentives in this program are really important. I think we, as human beings, all operate based on incentives, and the incentive for prisoners is to go through the program, gain the earned credit so that they can be released--not to shorten their sentence but in less confining conditions, for example, a halfway house.

I want to remind our colleagues that not all offenders, of course, are eligible for these credits. The bill specifically lists 48 offenses that disqualify offenders from earning time credits, including crimes like murder, assault, carjacking that results in injury and death, and the unlawful possession or use of a firearm by violent criminals and drug traffickers.

In other words, by focusing our efforts on low-risk offenders and by giving them the opportunity to access these programs--these education programs, these addiction treatment programs--we can focus our attention and our money on the truly violent and high-risk offenders, which I think is also an important feature of this legislation.

But it is important to remember that just because a specific crime is not included in the exclusion list of 48 offenses, it doesn't mean that the offender is automatically entitled to the earned-time credit.

The person must first be determined to be low risk; in other words, that is the failsafe. But notwithstanding whether the offense is listed, if you are not a low-risk offender, as determined by the testing that is done by the Bureau of Prisons, you will not be eligible for these less confining conditions.

This is not a determination made by Washington bureaucrats or even politicians. It is left to experienced law enforcement officers and wardens who work with these individuals on a daily basis.

We want to give the opportunity to those who would take advantage of it to turn their own lives around, but we will not do so at the cost of public safety. That is exactly what these risk assessment tools are designed to do, to tell us who is at highest risk of reoffending.

I believe this legislation is an investment with the potential for astronomical returns. We are not just talking about money, we are talking about human potential. We are investing in the men and women who want to turn their lives around once they are released from prisons, and we are investing in so doing for stronger and more viable communities. We are investing tax dollars in a system that helps produce stronger citizens.

When it comes to positive results, don't take my word for it. There is plenty of research that shows how valuable these programs can be. For example, in 2013, a study by RAND Corporation found that prisoners who participated in education programs were 43 percent less likely to return to prison than those who did not. Employment after release was 13 percent higher among prisoners who participated in these programs, and those who participated in vocational training were 28 percent more likely to be employed after they were released.

Our prisons should be more than just a warehouse for human beings. They should also serve as places where rehabilitation takes place, and hopefully people can take advantage of the opportunity once they have made a mistake and served their time to transform their own lives into productive citizens. That is what this legislation tries to do, and that is why it has gained such broad support on both sides of the aisle.

By investing in these education and training programs and these recidivism reduction programs, we can ensure that of the people who get out of prison, more will actually stay out of prison.

This bill is our opportunity to make meaningful changes in our criminal justice system, our opportunity to begin fixing a problem that plagues our country, and an opportunity to take a model that has been working in the States for more than a decade and use it to benefit all Americans. The odds of these individuals leaving prison and becoming more productive members of society should be higher than the odds of a coin flip.

I am proud to be a cosponsor of this legislation, and I look forward to voting yes when it comes up for a vote later today or tomorrow.

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