Recently, a few notable organizations have added their voices in support of criminal justice reform efforts in the Senate. The International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Major County Sheriffs’ Association, Concerned Veterans of America and the National District Attorneys Association — none of which are soft on crime — agree: The Senate’s Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act isn’t either.
Neither are former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, 9/11-era New York Police Chief Bernie Kerik, the states of Texas and Georgia, and a slew of conservative leaders.
And again, all of them know that not only is criminal justice reform not soft on crime, it’s a core conservative policy issue.
In the Senate, conservatives have been negotiating the details of SRCA since last year. The bill tackles reforms to the criminal justice system in two parts: First, it adjusts some punishments by allowing judges to deviate from certain mandatory-minimum sentences. The idea behind this is to ensure that low-level offenders are not tying up precious law-enforcement resources and to refocus on going after the worst criminals.
One of the sentencing fixes, known as the 924(c) “stacking fix,” is more commonly referred to as the “Weldon Angelos fix.” Weldon Angelos is currently serving time for selling marijuana three times to an undercover agent. He had no prior convictions and no violent episodes. The only notable aspect of his case was his possession of a firearm. He had a gun for two of the deals, while agents found a gun in his house for the third instance, and that counted as possessing a firearm.
Suddenly, simply having a firearm in your home is a crime.
Thanks to poorly written mandatory-minimum sentence provisions, he was sentenced to 55 years in prison. By comparison, the mandatory-maximum sentence for voluntary manslaughter is 15 years.
A person could kill someone and spend less time in the clink than Mr. Angelos. His excessive stint in prison is tying up resources that would be better used on a real threat to society.
Under no circumstances would a violent criminal receive any leniency on his or her punishment, even if they committed no violent act in connection with the crime for which they are being sentenced. In fact, if there’s any serious violent felony in the person’s criminal history, they aren’t eligible for any new sentencing relief. Furthermore, anyone hoping for a lighter sentence must first fully cooperate with prosecutors in the case.
The problem with our current excessive sentences for lower-level offenders is simple: Rather than deter crime, they create more crime, according to the best research we have.
America is not opening the cell doors. More like giving judges and prosecutors a carrot to get the cooperation of lower-level offenders and be better prepared to go after the Pablo Escobars of the world.
Second, SRCA would start to change our prison system into a real correctional system. Sadly, the recidivism rate in this country is unacceptably high. Our prisons have utterly failed to deter the people who go through the system from reoffending. No government agency should get a free pass when it comes to judging their use of taxpayer dollars and the outcomes it produces — and the prison system should be no exception.
That’s why the Senate’s bill would implement recidivism-reduction programming similar to that established in numerous red states to make sure the people leaving prison stay out of prison. Prisoners are encouraged to participate by allowing them to earn time credits that they can use to spend a specific portion of their sentence in either home confinement or community supervision.
That means that after successfully reducing their likelihood of committing more crimes, inmates are then transferred to other forms of supervision where they will take up fewer public resources and have an easier time reintegrating as productive members of society.
These reforms put inmates to work. That isn’t being soft on crime. America is getting ready to get even tougher on it.
Little wonder that the conservatives that first came up with these reforms in the states won election after election. So much so that they didn’t stop at one round of reforms: Texas is still passing reforms after starting nearly 10 years ago, only now it’s doing so with the lowest crime rates since 1968.
There are important conservative priorities being pursued in Congress, and justice reform is one of them. The naysayers are becoming ever fewer and more isolated.
Grover Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform. Adam Brandon is president and CEO of FreedomWorks. Both are members of the US Justice Action Network. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
