Newsletter: Light at the End of the Tunnel: Real Progress on Criminal Justice Reform

Statement

Dear Friends,

From the time I took office in 2011, I have been working on solutions to repair an expensive and ineffective federal criminal justice system.

This week, the effort took a historic step forward with the introduction of the Safe, Accountable, Fair, and Effective (SAFE) Justice Act of 2015. I am the lead Republican cosponsor of the bill, which is authored by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., and Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va.

I spent 18 months on the House Judiciary Committee's Over-Criminalization Task Force, led by Mr. Sensenbrenner and Mr. Scott. We held 10 hearings, collecting proven examples of state reforms that protect public safety while containing costs.

The federal imprisonment rate has increased 518 percent since 1980, as spending has jumped 595 percent to $6.7 billion. Meanwhile, 32 states have reduced both crime and imprisonment rates in the past five years. In the past decade, states cut imprisonment rates by 4 percent while the federal imprisonment rate rose 15 percent.

I have great confidence in the states as laboratories of democracy. Their success presents a tremendous opportunity to fix our broken federal sentencing and corrections system.

Our bill would comprehensively reform that system, from front-end sentencing to back-end release policies. The legislation reduces recidivism, concentrates prison space on violent and career criminals, increases the use of evidence-based alternatives to incarceration and curtails over-criminalization.

I have worked with Mr. Scott before, authoring the Smarter Sentencing Act. Aspects of that bill, H.R. 920, are incorporated in the SAFE Justice Act. After our bill was introduced in February, 16 lawmakers from both parties met at the White House and President Obama expressed support for the Smarter Sentencing Act.

The comprehensive bill aligns the federal prison system with science on criminal behavior. It reflects the growing consensus among researchers that overly long prison terms are a high-cost, low-return approach to public safety. It also includes practices in correctional supervision that are shown to reduce recidivism.

Supporters for the SAFE Justice Act cross the political spectrum, including the ACLU, Coalition for Public Safety, Justice Fellowship and NAACP.

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