Voters in battleground states support the goals of sentencing reform, according to a poll circulated by proponents of the legislation that they hope will encourage Republican lawmakers to vote for the deal.
About two-thirds of the 6,000 voters surveyed across 10 states agreed with three key planks that sentencing reform advocates make when pitching the legislation. The data doesn’t establish that voters want the particular bills pending in the House and Senate to pass, but it suggests that even vulnerable lawmakers could have a compelling case to make in favor of the policies, if they choose to support them.
“This polling runs counter to conventional wisdom,” GOP pollster Ed Goeas, whose firm conducted the survey, said in a statement on the results. Voters of every political stripe across the country, including Republicans, are consistently showing that they support safe and effective justice system reform, especially allowing for greater judicial discretion. This is a great combination – bipartisan voter support for a sound public policy.”
Sixty-nine percent of respondents said they agreed or somewhat agreed with the idea that “the main goal” of prison sentences should be “rehabilitating criminals to become productive, law-abiding citizens. Similarly, about 65 percent of respondents agreed that the prison system needs to make sure that when a prisoner is released, “they are less likely to commit another crime.”
Those findings might encourage supporters of the sentencing reform bill pending in the Senate, which would establish a federal program designed to rehabilitate prisoners and assess the likelihood that individual prisoners will commit crimes upon release. The bill also hopes to reduce the prison population, which would save money, by providing early release to some non-violent drug offenders, although opponents of the deal fear that early releases would be granted to violent offenders who would commit more crimes.
The most specific question asked pertained to mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which were ushered in during the tough-on-crime 1990s, but have fallen out of favor with both liberal and conservative senators. The poll asked voters what they think of “a proposal to change the way that non-violent criminals are sentenced so each sentence is tailored to address the individual circumstances of each case instead of having a one-size-fits-all mandatory minimum system.” Sixty-six percent of Democrats, 65 percent of Republicans, and 66 percent of independents who responded agreed with such an idea.
“Every candidate for office should be paying attention to these significant findings. Voters want action and they plan to take this issue with them to the voting booth. Justice reform will be a winning issue in the fall,” said Steve Hawkins, president of the Coalition for Public Safety, which commissioned the poll.
The poll was conducted in Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wiconsin — notable presidential battlegrounds, several of which also feature crucial Senate races. But the Senate is unlikely to vote on the sentencing reforms before the election, because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn’t want to divide Senate Republicans by bringing such a controversial bill to the floor.
