During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s law-and-order, tough-on-crime approach to criminal justice led many reformers to believe he wouldn’t be an ally in the movement to reform a system they believe to be overly punitive. As one NBC News headline put it, “With Trump in White House, criminal justice reformers look elsewhere.”
But Trump rarely mentioned justice issues, and used vague language when he did. This left some reformers, including the conservatives who make up a large part of the movement, hopeful that Trump just might help bring about reforms at the federal level.
One of those hopeful conservative reformers is Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who spoke at an editorial board meeting with the Washington Examiner last week.
When asked about whether criminal justice reform efforts could be reconciled with Trump’s emphasis on “law and order,” Lee said, effectively yes, though because Trump hasn’t said much, it’s difficult to know for sure.
“As far as I can recall, President Trump hasn’t spoken one way or another on the types of reforms that we address in the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act last year.” The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, which Lee has sponsored, would give judges more discretion in sentencing and improve the quality of federal prisons.
Lee added that there isn’t anything “in the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act that would counteract or contradict or undermine President Trump’s law and order message. To the contrary, I think it is consistent with law and order. I think it would facilitate law and order for the simple reason that our federal prison population has grown between 800 and 900 percent since 1980.
Lee said that many of those who oppose the Sentencing Act have broad philosophical objections to “making life easier for people who commit crimes.” But Lee has “found very, very few people who don’t support the idea of reforming them. Once they hear about the guy who sold three dime-bag quantities of pot over a 72-hour period, and because he had — happened to have a gun on his person at the time, which was neither brandished nor discharged in connection with the offense, ended up getting sentenced to 55 years in prison.”
When I asked Lee how his colleagues in the Senate respond to such arguments, he said that “Most of them at that point say yeah, that’s — that’s absurd. There are — there are a couple, whose identities I probably shouldn’t get into in this context who — who will say let the bastards rot in hell forever.”
When asked whether Jeff Sessions — now the attorney general — was one of those members who took the “let the bastards rot in hell forever” view, Lee said that Sessions may take a different position now that he’s in the executive branch.
“He’s in the role as the chief law enforcement officer rather than as policy maker. He’s an executive branch guy rather than a legislative branch guy. And so it’s not clear to me whether or to what extent he would necessarily tell President Trump to make it a priority to resist that bill and if he did, whether there would be others who might have a different mind. That’s what I’m trying to figure out right now.”
Lee has co-sponsored three bills that seek to reform the criminal justice system: The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act; the USA Freedom Act, which would curtail the government’s authority to keep tabs on US citizens; and the FAIR Act, which, among other things, would eliminate the profit motive for police to seize assets from property owners.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
