Traumatic Brain Injury Program Reauthorization Act of 2018
Floor Speech
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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor to urge my colleagues to join us in supporting the FIRST STEP Act, a bipartisan legislation that will make needed changes to Federal sentencing rules and prison reforms. A number of us have been working on this issue for years, but I do want to thank Chairman Grassley, who is here with us today, and Senator Feinstein for their leadership in getting it through the Judiciary Committee as well as Senator Durbin, who has been a longtime leader on this issue, and Senator Booker, who has worked so hard on this, as well as Senator Whitehouse and Senator Cornyn, who is here with us today, and many others. Senator Lee took on this cause at a time when it wasn't as easy as it is right now at the end of the year. I also want to thank the administration for working with us on this bill as well.
As a former chief prosecutor in Minnesota's largest county, I understand the need to use our resources to target the most serious offenders to maintain public safety. You have to make decisions in those kinds of jobs every day: decisions about your priorities, where you are going to put your criminal justice money, what is the safest thing to do for the community, knowing that a number of our offenders do reenter into society, what is the best way to make sure that if they do come back into society, they are going to be functioning members of society; that they are not going to go back to drugs or they are not going to commit additional crimes.
It is fine to pretend that it is not happening and people are going away forever, and some people rightfully do. Violent criminals and murderers don't come out again, but a number of offenders do come out again. So the question is, What do we do to make it the most safe for our community but also to allow them to become functioning members of our society? That is what this bill is about at its core.
We need a justice system that both protects the victims of crime and punishes those who break the law. Someone once said that prosecutors-- my old job--were ministers of justice. That is what we are doing with this bill. We are acknowledging that there are issues with our criminal justice system that we have to deal with. We are not just closing our eyes and pretending it is fine to pretend everyone goes away forever when we know they don't. Some people are coming out, and they should come back out again, and the FIRST STEP Act gets at those hard issues.
Our criminal justice system must administer justice fairly. The sentencing laws on low-level drug offenders were implemented decades ago, and in a number of cases they have diverted limited law enforcement resources away from important public safety initiatives that would allow us to actually go after violent criminals. This has resulted in prison sentences that actually don't fit the crime. Today our country has over 20 percent of the world's incarcerated people, even though we have less than 5 percent of the world's population. We need a criminal justice system that works for our communities. That is why I fought for bipartisan criminal justice reform for years.
As a former prosecutor, I have long supported important policies, including more law enforcement resources. I lead that bill with Senator Murkowski and the COPS Program to get more law enforcement resources to our police. I think that is very important. I worked hand in hand with our police in Minnesota for 8 years. They have very hard jobs.
As a former prosecutor, I also supported important policies that make it better for the community and the police to work together. That includes better training for our law enforcement, that includes videotaped interrogations, that includes reforms with the eyewitness process. We were one of the first States to make changes there, including body cameras, diversity in hiring, and meaningful work between law enforcement and our citizens--fair jury selection processes. There are a number of things we have done but must continue to do to increase that trust between the community and our law enforcement.
As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I supported the bipartisan Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act for years. My colleagues and I worked across party lines to pass that bill out of committee earlier in February and last Congress as well. Although the bill was never brought to the floor of the Senate until this week, today we finally have an opportunity to make meaningful progress.
The FIRST STEP Act represents a concerted bipartisan effort to strike an effective balance to improve the fair administration of justice while keeping our communities safe. Even though this bill is not perfect, it is the result of a compromise between two sides and people with a lot of different views and many groups that are here to advocate for citizens. It is a compromise that has the endorsement of a range of groups that you don't usually see, such as from the Fraternal Order of Police to the ACLU. This bill represents a critical opportunity that shouldn't be lost.
One of the most important reforms in this bill are the changes to mandatory minimums. We all know people who have been caught up in a criminal justice system that can be unfair. I believe strongly in enforcing our laws on the books and putting criminal offenders behind bars to protect public safety, but for nonviolent, low-level drug offenders, there are more creative and evidence-based ways to deal with them than longer prison sentences.
The FIRST STEP Act allows judges to sentence below the mandatory minimum for low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who work with the government.
It also reduces some of the longest sentences now on the books, including decreasing the second-strike mandatory minimum of 20 years to 15 years and reduces the third-strike mandatory minimum of life in prison to 25 years.
This bill includes a crucial provision to allow people who were sentenced under discriminatory drug laws, which required a longer mandatory minimum sentence for the possession of crack than for the possession of the same amount of cocaine, to petition to be resentenced under the reform guidelines we passed in 2010.
Significantly, this bill will not automatically reduce any one person's prison sentence. Instead, the bill simply allows people to petition courts and prosecutors for an individualized review based on the particular facts of their case.
That is what justice is supposed to be about. It is not always a one- size-fits-all. It is giving the people who work in the justice system knowing you have mandatory minimums still in place, knowing you want fairness across the system, but it allows judges and prosecutors to look at an individualized case and decide what is best for public safety and what is best for the community. By giving prosecutors and judges this discretion, we will give them the tools to better see that justice is done.
The FIRST STEP Act also incorporates much needed reforms to our Federal prisons to treat people more humanely and to encourage participation in programs intended to help people from committing another crime after they are released.
In my old job as Hennepin County attorney, I always said we would try as much as possible to run our operation as a business. We would be efficient, we would keep track of what we were doing and be accountable to the public and show them what the results were with regard to our prosecutions and the numbers and what the sentences would be. We did all that, but one of the things I also knew is, while you want to run government as much as possible as efficiently as a business, there was one way we were not like a business in the criminal justice system: We did not want to see repeat customers at our doors. That is not what you want when you are running the prosecutor's office. We wanted to make sure people could get their lives back and their acts together so they didn't keep cycling through the criminal justice system.
This bill, the FIRST STEP Act, includes a provision to require that Federal prisoners be placed in a facility as close to their primary residence as possible. That makes sure families aren't separated, and they can continue to have visitors. One of the things we know is, it is very important for them to make that transition when they get back in the community. This straightforward change is an important step toward reducing recidivism because research suggests that people who maintain contact with their families while they serve time are less likely to commit crimes after they are released. Other key provisions in this legislation expand access to treatment and education.
I look at this two ways. One, when I first became a lawyer at a private law firm in the Twin Cities, I actually got involved in a program called Amicus, where we went to visit people in prisons. I visited a woman for a number of years until I became chief CA--that became a little awkward--but she went on to serve her sentence and got back out into the community. That program was really the community saying: We want to keep the thought out there that there is hope, that these people are going to get out at some point, and they need role models and people who are willing to work with them. I saw that work with my own eyes.
The other reason I care so much about this bill is that I am a child of an alcoholic--someone who went through treatment and who, after a number of DWIs, was finally pushed into treatment and was, in his own words, ``pursued by grace.'' I think other people, whether they are in the prison system or not, should be able to have that same opportunity for themselves and for their kids.
I was able to see my dad literally climb the highest mountain as an adventurer, a mountain climber, and a columnist but sink to the lowest valley because of the disease of alcoholism.
You see that all the time in our prison system. Whether it is drugs or whether it is alcohol, that is one of the reasons people get involved in crime, to feed their addiction or because they are not functioning normally and making decisions they would make if they weren't addicted.
This bill encourages the use of evidence-based treatment for opioid and heroin abuse and will help to address the addiction that is the root cause of so many crimes.
I come from a State that believes in treatment. We are known as the ``Land of 10,000 Lakes,'' and every so often people jokingly call it the ``Land of 10,000 Treatment Centers.'' That includes, of course, Hazelden Betty Ford. We are very proud of their work, but there are also multiple other treatment centers in our State. It is a major part of our criminal justice system and our drug courts. We had one of the first major drug courts in the country, and I continue to carry on that work as a Senator.
Taken together, the prison reforms in this bill and the recidivism reforms and reentry reforms are an important step that will help us to make progress toward reducing the number of repeat offenders.
As a prosecutor, I have always believed that our job was to serve the cause of justice, and that was to convict the guilty but protect the innocent. Sometimes the innocent are, of course, victims of crime. That is the first thing that comes to mind. But the innocent are also people who are unfairly accused of crimes. That is why it is so important to have all of these measures in place, whether it is videotaped interrogations or jury selection that is fair--to make sure our process is fair.
At some point, when someone has served a sentence and turned their life around, they go from guilty, which they once were, to having a chance to go out there as an innocent person who is just trying to lead a life. That is what our job is as Senators--to do justice, to make sure we have rules in place that make sure the guilty go behind bars if they have committed a serious crime but also to protect the innocent. That includes the families of victims and the families of offenders.
There is still much work for us to do to improve our criminal justice system, and I am committed with my colleagues, many of whom I mentioned earlier, who have been leaders on this bill--I see Senator Leahy here from the State of Vermont, former chair of the Judiciary Committee, who worked so hard on this as well. So many people have contributed to the effort from the left and from the right, from the Democratic Party and from the Republican Party.
This is a victory for justice today as we consider this bill. I urge my colleagues to support it.
Thank you.
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