Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Bobby Scott (D-VA) introduced their bipartisan prison reform bill, the Safe, Accountable, Fair, and Effective (SAFE) Justice Act, on Thursday.
At a press conference, Sensenbrenner and Scott stressed that their proposals are inspired by successful reforms implemented at the state level, in both red and blue states.
“Like so many of our federal policies, we’re learning from innovations in the states,” Sensenbrenner said. He pointed to states like Texas, which have begun to deal with nonviolent crimes “outside the prison walls,” through drug courts and other alternatives to incarceration. These methods have been proven to reduce prisons’ usually-dismal recidivism rates.
The “research-based” bill would reform mandatory minimum sentences so that only actual leaders in drug trafficking, as opposed to low-level offenders, would serve harsh sentences.
It would also incentivize prisoners to participate in rehabilitation programs, with the potential to reduce their sentences or probation. And it would cut down on the number of regulatory crimes, of which there may be as many as 300,000.
Brown touted the bipartisan nature of the bill, which has ten Republican and ten Democratic cosponsors. “We have found that when you ignore the slogans and sound bites and stick with the evidence, there is in fact a lot of common ground,” he said.
The bill is backed by an array of organizations from diverse ideological backgrounds, including the ACLU, Koch Industries, the American Conservative Union, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, the NAACP, #cut50, and Right on Crime.
Koch Industries general counsel and senior vice president Mark Holden said the Kochs “fully supported” the bill, and called for a system that would “treat everyone in the system…with dignity and respect as an individual.”
“Our criminal justice system is a major barrier to opportunity,” he said.
A number of the bill’s cosponsors gave remarks, including Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), who observed that he is from one of the “redder” districts in the country, but sees a “moral imperative” to fix the justice system.
By reducing sentencing for nonviolent offenders, Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah) argued, Republicans are not going soft on crime, but preventing nonviolent drug users from gaining prison connections and becoming hardened criminals. “I think it’s important for us to do everything we can to keep serious criminals in prison,” she said. “But it’s not our job to create them.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Matt Haney, policy director for prison reform initiative #cut50 told Red Alert Politics. “There were more Republicans that spoke today than Democrats, which is extraordinary. In terms of the prospects for the bill, that’s a really good sign.”
