Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, predicted Monday that the Republican National Committee’s resolution in support of criminal justice reform would boost a legislative package he helped write that has scrambled the usual political alliances in the Senate.
“The Republican National Committee’s strong endorsement of criminal justice reform this past weekend is just another example of how momentum for this issue is growing in the conservative movement,” Lee said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “I hope the Senate will answer this call and take up our Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act soon.”
Lee has powerful allies in the effort. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, helped negotiate the package with Senate Democrats. But the sentencing reform bill has split the Republican conference, forcing Lee and others to spend the last few months negotiating a revised package that they hope can attract more GOP senators.
The RNC resolution doesn’t endorse that specific bill, but it adopts one of the most basic assumptions of the sentencing reforms that Lee supports, that lower incarceration rates will increase public safety. “Despite significant increases in incarceration and associated costs, taxpayers are not receiving the public safety return they deserve because lengthy prison terms increase recidivism rates for low-level offenders, with more than half of state offenders returning to prison within three years — any government program with a failure rate that high would earn justifiable criticism,” the resolution stated.
Skeptics of the legislation think the public safety trend lines show the value of the tough-on-crime bills that shaped law enforcement policy over the last 30 years. “I’m a believer that mandatory minimum sentences for violent criminals has led to the reduction of criminality in this country,” Florida Senator Marco Rubio, one of the Republicans targeted by the would-be reformers, told the Washington Examiner last week. “I had problems with the original version because of that.”
Lee, Cornyn, and Grassley negotiated with Democrats to revise the bill in deference to Rubio and other senators who thought the first version would allow violent offenders to be released, while adding other tweaks to ensure that the bill would still affect a significant percentage of the prison population. Activists supporting the reforms argued that senators should keep state policies in mind when thinking of the national crime rate.
“Over the course of the last decade, the ten states that most significantly reduced their prison populations through these reforms saw roughly a 13 percent drop in their crime rate,” Holly Harris, president of the U.S. Justice Action Network, told the Examiner. “The 10 states that most significantly increased their prison populations only saw about an eight percent drop in their crime rates.”
At least three GOP senators have joined the original 13 supporters of the sentencing reforms, after reviewing the updates. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, might be the most significant addition. As a former attorney general, he has law enforcement experience that might help him sway some colleagues.
Sullivan has also survived the type of “Willie Horton” political attack that many Republicans fear when they think of the sentencing reforms pending in the Senate. Sullivan won his seat in 2014 despite being blamed by his Democratic rival for the release of a criminal who went on to commit murder and sexual assault. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., is one of the most vulnerable lawmakers in the country, but he is also touting the bill.
Even so, the potential for such “Willie Horton” attacks to be leveled against Republicans facing difficult reelection bids might doom the Senate bill. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., remains publicly neutral, but some in the Senate think he won’t allow the sentencing reforms to receive a vote this year.
“The issue is so emotional, this close to the election, I think McConnell will try to stop it,” one GOP senator who supports the bill predicted to the Examiner.
That frustrates Harris, particularly in light of the RNC resolution. “I don’t think it takes a profile in courage to vote for this legislation,” she said. “I think all of this great fear of voting for this legislation is ridiculous.”
