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Floor Speech

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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I am pretty excited. In fact, let's just say this is the season of joy, and I feel such joy today.

The gentleman who just spoke, the Senator from Illinois, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is a man of heroic action. What we are marking today, this anniversary, is so much due to his work and steadfast leadership on these issues years before I came here. We are celebrating this moment of joy and a moment of deep, profound gratitude, and I want to give Senator Durbin my deep thanks.

I also want to thank my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I want to thank Chuck Grassley. I want to thank Mike Lee. I want to thank all of their staffs who worked so hard for this moment. This was truly a bipartisan effort and one of the best experiences I have had as a U.S. Senator.

In addition to that, we worked with the President's staff and his team to get to that bill and that moment. We had activists across the political spectrum, people like Mark Holden, who worked for Koch Industries, all the way to folks like Jessica Jackson and Dan Jones. We had not only activists but people who were directly impacted-- advocating organizations, nonprofits--trying to bring justice to the justice system.

This bill was a product of compromise and shows what is possible in this institution when both sides come together on common ground. It was a recognition that had been growing that the criminal justice system needed reform and was devastating our Nation's highest ideals and principles. We are a nation of liberty and justice for all.

Think about the backdrop to this. Think about all of the facts that were happening leading to this incredible accomplishment 5 years ago.

Our Federal prison system since 1980 had grown--exploded--by 800 percent. The United States of America, which professes freedom as its fundamental ideal, had more people incarcerated than any other nation on the planet Earth. One in four incarcerated people on our planet in the world was here in the United States of America. We had a system that was not based on justice or restorative justice but based on retribution and, in many ways, cruelty. We became captive of impulses of fear rather than the wisdom for healing and growth and security.

I was stunned when I first saw that data point that about a third of the adult Americans in our country--adults--had a criminal record. Think about the criminalization. Think about that. Over 5 million children in our country had a parent who was actually in jail or prison during their childhood.

This overreaction to the War on Drugs that did not--it was not a war on drugs but a war on people and disproportionately impacted certain people and not others. The African-American community is a great example. Because of this overincarceration, there were more Black folks in our country under criminal supervision--more Black men under criminal supervision than were enslaved in 1850. This is an affront to our ideals of liberty and justice.

We malign other countries for imprisoning journalists, for imprisoning politicians, imprisoning people who dare to protest the state, but in our country, whom do we imprison? The poor. The mentally ill. The addicted. Survivors of abuse and sexual assault. Black and Brown folks are way overindexed in our prisons and jails. Any visit to an American jail will show in so many ways the failings of our system.

Instead of offering people help with substance abuse or mental illness, we were wasting billions of dollars, tearing families apart, destroying communities, and ultimately making communities less safe; investing billions of dollars in warehousing people--not in roads, not in bridges, but incarcerating human beings. In fact, between 1990 and 2005, a new prisoner jail opened in our country every 10 days. Think about that for a second. Our national treasure was being used not for education, not for research, not for roads, bridges, technology, but to warehouse human beings.

The perversity of the system was that it was making us less safe. People who were being released had recidivism rates that were so high because they weren't getting the help they needed. People incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses were coming out and facing over 40,000 collateral consequences that stopped them from getting a job, from buying a home, from providing for their family.

Our system is supposed to be about justice, and what was happening in the early 2000s is that red States and blue States were starting to make an effort to reform their criminal justice systems. We saw States, from Georgia to New Jersey, lower their prison populations and lower crime at the same time, understanding that if you affirm people's dignity and give them pathways to health and well-being, you not only lower your prison population but you make communities safer and you make families more intact.

After decades of these failed policies, a group of bipartisan Senators, working with a Republican White House and House Members, crafted this legislation that has affected thousands of people's lives.

Senator Durbin said it: The population that was liberated from unjust incarceration as a result of this bill has a lower recidivism rate than people who have served out full terms and come home, because the fullness of this bill wasn't just about liberating people from unjust incarceration but creating programs that could empower people in prison to pathways to better lives when they are coming out. It was logical, it was common sense, and that is why the rightwing think tanks and the leftwing tanks and all in between were supporting and advocating and pushing for this commonsense bill.

Five years after the passage of the First Step Act, we now have evidence that not only demonstrates its success but shatters the myth that criminal justice reform and public safety don't go hand in hand. As the Senator said, almost 30,000 individuals were released, and almost 9 in 10 have avoided rearrest or reincarceration, compared to the 45-percent recidivism rate Senator Durbin talked about.

Oh, but God, these are data. This is just statistics. What is powerful for me is meeting the human beings and their families, meeting the children who had their parents come home. Do you want to talk about joy? When this passed 5 years ago, I will never forget, right out those doors, as soon as it passed, as an impulse, I hugged Chuck Grassley because it was what I knew was going to happen. The holidays were really going to be about the American values, that the most sacrosanct thing we can have is liberty. The most severe thing the government can do is to take someone's liberty. We literally have slogans in our country--``Give me liberty or give me death.''

To see people come up to you and saying: All hope was gone. I was sitting in the depths of incarceration, like Joseph thrown into the well, thrown into prison--no hope--but yet I found deliverance because of Republicans and Democrats who worked together for common sense.

I visited with those families. I have seen the impact on children. I have seen the stories of grades improving in school. I have seen the stories of people who have come out of prison as we met, Senator, who have gone to work making their communities safer, doing violence intervention, helping other people not go the same way.

This is what happens when we affirm human dignity. This is what happens when we understand how powerful and urgent families are in America. This is what happens when we live the values we swear an oath to with our hand over our heart--liberty and justice for all.

So yes, today, again, I wish Senator Grassley were here. I might try to hug him one more time in honor of the anniversary. But this is a time when we should be celebrating this incredible step toward justice.

But I will tell Senator Durbin, we called this the First Step Act. I remember the press conferences we had, Republicans and Democrats standing together and saying: This is the first step, but we still have work to do because we are still a nation where the majority of women incarcerated are survivors of sexual violence. We are still a nation where people struggling with addiction more easily find jail than treatment. We are still a nation where our prisons and jails are filled with people who are mentally ill and need medical care that they do not receive. We are still a nation where you get better justice if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent.

So let us celebrate progress. Let us celebrate success. But let us double down again on making our Nation real for everyone because if you want to judge a nation, don't just look at the size of their military, the height of their towers. Go to the dark places. Go to the shadows on this holiday season, celebrating a man who focused on the least of these, as it says in Matthew 25. Did you visit me in prison? If you go there, you see the unfinished business.

If you celebrate this season, remember those who are in solitary confinement, remember those who are suffering unjustly, and remember those most in need of our empathy, our grace, our love.

The First Step Act was the height of my experiences as a Senator, but the United States of America and this greatest deliberative body--we can go higher.

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Mr. BOOKER. Senator, I have four words: Joe Zogby for President.

Thank you.

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