Keeping Violent Offenders Off Our Streets Act of 2025
Floor Speech
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Ms. SIMON. Mr. Speaker, the ranking member is right. This is a very strange bill. It is absolutely right that it is judges who make the determination whether bail should be recorded in the record. It is the judge.
I want to make sure that we are really clear what is in the language of the bill. This bill directly targets faith institutions and nonprofit organizations that step in every single day to support families navigating a deeply unequal justice system across the country. A wide network of faith leaders every Sunday pass a hat to ensure that there is deep and formal due process for individuals facing prosecution. Under this legislation, those churches, those individuals, would be subject to enforcement.
This bill changes how we think about the justice system in this country. It allows for people to return to their children, keep their jobs, and prepare for their next day in court. That is what the bail process should be about.
While I don't have much time left, if you would allow me, my mentor, Dr. Clarence Jones, the speechwriter for Dr. Martin Luther King, told me--
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Ms. SIMON. Dr. Clarence Jones, the speechwriter for Dr. Martin Luther King, told me a story that, during the civil rights protests in the mid-1960s, hundreds of Black, White, and Jewish young people sat at lunch counters throughout the South, understanding and knowing what they were up against, while the Klan burned cigarettes on their backs, spit in their faces, pushed them from behind, and knocked them down. They were led outside to hoses and dogs.
Harry Belafonte and Dr. Clarence Jones, on a push from Dr. Martin Luther King, drove up to New York City and sat with donors and folks on the right side of justice to get bail to bail out those hundreds of children. Would we rather they sit in jails in the Deep South and be beaten and killed?
Mr. Speaker, think about what we are asking today: for churches and charities to stop their mission to ensure that people in this country have the life, liberty, and due process that they so deserve.
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