Stop Advertising Victims of Exploitation Act of 2015

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for
yielding.
I rise in opposition to H.R. 285, the SAVE Act. While I support the
underlying goal of ensuring that those who facilitate sex trafficking
through advertising are prosecuted to the full extent of the law, I am
opposed to the bill's mandatory minimum sentencing provisions.

Mandatory minimum sentences have been studied extensively and have
been found to distort rational sentencing systems, discriminate against
minorities, waste money, and often require a judge to impose sentences
that violate common sense. To add insult to injury, studies have shown
that mandatory minimum sentences fail to reduce crime.

Under this bill, the advertising of sex trafficking will result in a
mandatory penalty of 10 or 15 years, depending on the circumstances of
the crime. There is no doubt that many of these individuals prosecuted
under this bill should receive long prison sentences, but in some cases
a mandatory sentence of 10 or 15 years may not be justified.

This is particularly troublesome when you consider the possible scope
of defendants who could be prosecuted under the bill. Notably, the
prohibition on advertising does not only apply to the sex trafficker
who places the ad, or the employee who accepted the ad, but also
includes those who benefit financially from the ad.

That is all of the employees, including the receptionist or the
computer guy, everybody on the payroll who might have seen the ads or
read in the paper that the company publishes some illegal ads but
decided to look the other way; they should be held responsible under
the provisions of the bill. And many of them would certainly warrant a
sentence of 15 years or even more, but not all of them.

Madam Speaker, mandatory minimum sentences didn't get into the
criminal code at all once but one at a time, each one part of an
otherwise good bill. If we expect to get rid of mandatory minimums, we
have to first stop passing new ones like this.

Madam Speaker, if people ask why a judge in Florida had to sentence
Marissa Alexander to 20 years for firing a warning shot at her abusive
boyfriend, or why some drug dealer's girlfriend got 25 years when she
had no meaningful role in his drug dealing, or why the United States
has 5 percent of the world's population but 25 percent of the world's
prisoners, they would not understand why anybody said they had to vote
for a bill that further expands mandatory minimum sentences.

Fifteen years in prison, mandatory for everybody on the payroll that
gets caught up in this bill--that is what is in this bill. There is no
discretion afforded to the judge. The sentence would have to be
imposed, whether it makes any sense or not.

Madam Speaker, if we expect to repeal mandatory minimum sentences,
the first order of business is to stop passing new ones. This bill
contains a new mandatory minimum that someday will require a judge to
impose a sentence that violates common sense. Therefore, I urge my
colleagues to vote ``no.''

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source