Congress, don’t punt on criminal justice reform

Our current criminal justice system doesn’t work. Almost half of those released are going right back to prison again. Getting a 50 percent on a test isn’t good. 

And the system is costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars a year. Yet as I walk the halls of Congress talking with different offices on both sides of the aisle, I see a dangerous slippage in some offices toward saying maybe criminal justice reform will not pass this year, maybe we have to wait until next year. This same pessimism is slipping into the media as well.

We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The criminal justice reform bills in the House and Senate will not release violent offenders, and isn’t a get out of jail free card. They will not solve the nation’s recidivism crisis –but they will take an important step in that direction.

{mosads}The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act (S.2123) and the package of bills in the House the Sentencing Reform Act (H.R.3713) as well as the Corrections and Recidivism Reduction Act (H.R.759) would take a comprehensive, careful, bipartisan approach to reforming our criminal justice system. These bills would make reductions to mandatory minimum sentences and make improvements to services provided in federal prisons to reduce recidivism, make communities whole, and allow people to be productive members of society.

If Congress fails to pass this legislation and send it to the president in the lame duck, our lawmakers will miss a historic opportunity to demonstrate that it can act as a body on a bipartisan initiative to move our country forward. What other legislation has the support of Speaker Ryan (R-WI), Chairman Goodlatte (R-VA), Ranking Member Conyers (D-MI), Chairman Grassley (R-IA), Ranking Member Leahy (D-VT), Senator Booker (D-NJ), Senator Lee (R-UT), and Senator Durbin (D-IL). 

Tuesday night during the Vice Presidential debate Governor Mike Pence (R-IN) said directly that we need to pass criminal justice reform.

I grew up in a community that was over-policed and criminalized. I’ve been thrown on the hood of a car because the vehicle registration was in my mother’s name. Thankfully that and some random searches are the worst that I’ve seen in my life. But that experience is why I became the chief lobbyist on incarceration and criminal justice at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

This system has young black men learning to shave for the first time in prison because of a possession charge, fathers removed from their families, girlfriends sent to prison for years simply because their boyfriends’ were drug dealers and they were caught in the midst. These are real people, not numbers.

Excessive sentences for nonviolent crimes are also ballooning the federal budget; starving the Department of Justice of funds that are used disproportionately for federal prisons; and ignoring the root causes of crime in the first place. The lame duck session after the next election is the perfect time to pass this legislation. My message to lawmakers: don’t miss this historic, once in a generation opportunity.

Santos Woss is the Legislative Associate for Domestic Policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Follow him on Twitter @JoseWoss

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