Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., on Tuesday blasted a Senate criminal justice reform bill as an attempt to go easy on criminals, remarks that are the latest sign of the problems the Senate is having moving the bill.
On the Senate floor, Cotton called the bill a “massive social experiment in criminal leniency” and introduced his own bill to study the recidivism rates of criminals who are released early.
“If supporters of this bill and President Obama are wrong, if this grand experiment in criminal leniency goes awry, how many lives will be ruined?” Cotton asked. “How many dead? How much of the anti-crime progress of the last generation will be wiped away for the next?”
Cotton was joined by Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, David Perdue, R-Ga., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., on his bill requiring a study of those who might be released under the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, which was passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee in November by a 15-5 vote.
Senators are in the process of considering how to tweak that stalled bipartisan bill, and may change language that would reduce mandatory minimum sentences for armed career criminals from 15 to 10 years. They may also consider revising part of the bill that would give judges more discretion to reduce mandatory minimum sentences for violent offenders or criminals who had possessed a firearm.
Cotton, along with other conservatives, have argued the legislation would let out violent offenders likely to commit additional crimes and thus increase the crime rate.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who introduced the bipartisan legislation last year, said lawmakers are “continuing to work on a path forward.”
“We will maintain our core principles and the significance of the bill and the broad bipartisan support that this bill has already received,” Grassley said at a congressional briefing Tuesday afternoon with Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration. That group is backing the bipartisan bill, as is the Obama administration.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, a cosponsor of the bipartisan bill, said at a criminal justice reform panel that he doesn’t believe the bill is stalled.
