The Second Chance Act
THE SECOND CHANCE ACT -- (House of Representatives - December 06, 2005)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) and the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones) for working together tonight on this Special Order. I especially want to thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) for his hard work in dealing with prisoners and their problems.
Obviously, we are in a democracy where in most States prisoners cannot vote, so there is nothing in it for you. However, there is something in it for the prisoners. But also there is something in it when you help those prisoners get out and do well. There is also something in it for everybody else, because if they get out and do well rather than get out, and with the present trend, two-thirds are going right back to prison.
The public, the law-abiding public benefits from your work, because they are less likely to be victimized by another crime. They also as taxpayers are less likely to have to pay for the $20,000, $30,000, or $40,000 a year incarceration for the two-thirds of the prisoners that go back.
So the gentleman's work not only helps the prisoners, but also help the law-abiding citizens in terms of their public safety and helps the taxpayers in terms of not having to pay for the incarceration.
Your legislation is bipartisan legislation. It is not a panacea for everything that needs to be done, but it certainly makes a significant step in the right direction in ensuring those who leave our Federal and State prisons have the assistance they need to avoid returning.
As you mentioned, there are close to 700,000 people who will leave the prisons, the jails and prisons of the United States next year. Most will be ill prepared to succeed in earning a living and leading a law-abiding life, and the resources to help them are very limited. Your bill will help them.
Now, we know that the chances of success for the prisoners are extremely small. Two-thirds come back to prison within 3 years. We know, as the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones) has pointed out, that it is hard to get a job if you have got a felony record. Obviously, the fact that you have that gap in your resume does not help.
The fact that you have to say that you are a convicted felon does not help you get a job. Most prisoners have limited education, they have limited resources, they have limited job skills, they are disqualified from many Federal programs by virtue of a drug offense.
And there are benefits that they are not entitled to. We also have a situation where they have limited or no family support, no community support. So it is not surprising that two-thirds of all prisoners released are rearrested for new crimes within 3 years of their release.
Although the national crime rate has fallen significantly over the last few years, we are seeing more and more people sent to prison for longer and longer times, and the problem is going to continue to grow before it gets better. We are still passing new bills with longer prison sentences and establishing mandatory minimum sentences and other kinds of sentences that make sure that the time served is even longer and longer and more and more people are sent to prison.
We have seen some of these schemes, like the mandatory minimums studied. And the studies have concluded that minimum mandatory sentences are distorted in the effort to establish an orderly, fair, and appropriate sentencing scheme. These programs discriminate against minorities, violate common sense, and in the end waste the taxpayers' money.
Now, all of this focus on the draconian sentences has led us to the point, as you pointed out, over 2.2 million people are locked up in our Federal prisons and State jails, a five-fold increase in just the last 20 years. The prison population on the Federal level has increased over seven-fold in the last 20 years.
For example, in 1984 the daily lock-up count in prisons and jails was just over 400,000. 400,000. 25,000 in the Federal prisons. Today 2 million prisoners are in State and local prisons. Almost 200,000 in Federal prisons. 400,000 20 years ago, over 2 million today.
According to many studies, most of that is through the new sentencing schemes like mandatory minimums. As a result of the focus on incarceration, the United States leads the world in incarceration, by far. We are in first place: 726 inmates per 100,000 population. 726.
Second place Russia, 532. We are at 726. 532. Most are in the hundreds. England, 142 per 100,000. Australia, 117. Canada, 116. Germany, 91. France, 95 per 100,000. The United States, 700-and-some per 100,000. When you go into the inner cities, it is not 700-and-some; it is 3,000 per 100,000. Five thousand in the inner cities. 116 in Canada, 5,000 in our inner cities.
No matter how tough we get in sentencing, the fact is that 95 percent of inmates will be released at some point. The question is whether they are going to reenter society in a context that better prepares them to lead law-abiding lives or whether two-thirds will return to prison within 3 years, as the present trend is.
If we are going to continue to send more people to prison with longer and longer sentences and spend that kind of money, we ought to spend the little bit of money in this bill to reduce the chances when they are released that they will be likely to come back to prison.
That is why the Second Chance Act is so important. And I applaud the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) and the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones) and former Representative Portman. This is a bipartisan bill supported by over 90 cosponsors, including me and virtually all of the criminal justice advocates and organizations in the country, including law enforcement who work with or are familiar with the situation encountered by those leaving our prisons.
The only criticism I have heard of this legislation is that it perhaps might not go far enough to fully address all of the problems of those facing problems reentering society from prisons.
Now, I agree with that criticism, because it does not do everything that needs to be done, but it is an important first step. And so I am a cosponsor of not only this bill but one that is being developed by the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) that was introduced last Congress and will be refiled this Congress, the Reentry Enhancement Act.
That bill addresses many of the programs and issues touched by this bill and goes even further by actually implementing many of the programs on a national level.
Now, I have seen the value of these programs. The Virginia CARES Program, Community Action Reentry System, Virginia CARES Program, has been studied, and they have just little meager resources.
But those who get the benefits of that program, we have seen a 25 percent reduction in recidivism compared to like prisoners who do not get a benefit from the program. Twenty-five percent reduction. When you calculate that out in terms of those that do not come back into prison and what we would have to pay for their incarceration, we save more money than we spend.
And we not only help the prisoners lead a productive life, save more money than we spend and also spare that 25 percent of victims who would have been victimized, victims of crime, they do not have to be victims of crime because we made that cost-effective expenditure of money helping the prisoners, but also helping the taxpayer and helping public safety.
As a society, we often breathe a sigh of relief when a long sentence is issued for a crime as if that is the end of our responsibilities. But with the numbers of prisoners and the amount of money we spend with those long sentences and the fact that when they finish that long sentence, they are going to turn around and go right back, we need to do more.
We need to make sure that we do the financially and morally responsible thing. We cannot allow ourselves the luxury of sounding tough on crime, tough on crime policies with no attention to what happens next.
To continue in the direction we are going is unfair to the taxpayer, unfair to those prisoners, and unfair to the unsuspecting people that will be victims of crime because we did not spend the money that we needed to spend.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the work of my colleagues in developing and promoting this legislation. I look forward to continuing to work with them and other members of the bipartisan coalition to enact this measure so that we cannot only help the prisoners but help the taxpayers and help public safety.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I ask them to decide right up front what choice they are going to make on crime policy. Are you trying to reduce crime or are you trying to play politics? We know what helps us get elected. We know how to play politics. We also know how to reduce crime. Once you have made that choice, the rest of crime policy is easy. If you are playing politics, you don't have to worry about the effects of the policy, you just have to make sure that you have got a good vote-getting slogan. You can be wasting the taxpayers' money. You can be even increasing crime. Some of these slogans like codifying ``If you do the adult crime, you do the adult time.'' That slogan has been studied up and down and the conclusion of every study is that the crime rate will go up if you codify that slogan. The crime rate will go up. You help yourself get elected, the crime rate goes up. Like I said, make your choice. If you are interested in reducing crime, some of these policies are stupid. If you are interested in getting elected, some of those slogans are very helpful. When you get into helping prisoners, let's decide not whether you are interested in the prisoner or not, just whether you are interested in reducing crime. If your goal is to reduce crime, this is one of the most cost-effective expenditures you can make, a lot better than lengthening the sentence. Ninety-five percent will get out of prison at one point or another. You have got 600,000 people, almost 700,000 people coming back into the community, two-thirds of whom will end up going back to prison if we don't do anything. If you want to take that 650,000, almost 700,000 people, spend a little bit of money and you can reduce the crime rate amongst that group, if you can reduce the crime rate, you will not only reduce crime, you will also save the taxpayer a lot of money and spare the potential victims of crime that victimization.
If you ignore what you have done for humanity in helping the prisoners, just ignore that, just look at what you are doing for the taxpayer and the law-abiding citizen, this is the right thing to do. You also help prisoners lead a more productive life. But that is frankly, from a public policy position, a secondary aspect. We are trying to reduce crime. We are trying to save money. This saves money and reduces crime so that the law-abiding citizen doesn't have to worry as much about being a victim of crime. You do that by helping the prisoner lead a productive life. That is what your bill does. It is cost effective and reduces crime.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. The gentleman talked about spending the money. We are spending the money. Six hundred thousand people get out every year. Two-thirds of them come back. That is 400,000 going back. At just $20,000 a year, that is $8 billion we are spending because we don't reduce recidivism. It is actually probably more like $10 billion to $16 billion by the time you invest 20, 30, $40,000 a piece, but at a minimum $8 billion, if we spent a portion of that, if we could significantly reduce recidivism by turning lives around like the life you mentioned instead of having to pay for incarceration, we are now on the receiving end of the tax money that she is paying. Every program we have seen, and this is no different, of those reentry programs when you provide education, you reduce recidivism, save more money than you spend, drug treatment, transitional services, significantly reducing recidivism because of the expense of incarceration, 20, 30, $40,000 a year, you don't have to reduce recidivism very much to save the taxpayer some money. We are spending the money now and we ought to be spending it better. We ought to be smart on crime rather than rhetorical on crime.
If we were smarter on crime, we would spend some of this $8 billion that we are going to spend next year because we did not make the investments last year. We need to make the investments in these people to reduce recidivism and save money, and if we do that, it would save more money than we spend if we pass this bill.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
http://thomas.loc.gov