Black lives matter to the GOP

Republicans are proving that they know the #BlackLivesMatter mantra better than any political party. Taking the lessons learned after the 2012 elections, Republicans have made a commitment to be inclusive and work on issues that impact people beyond their traditional base. Their efforts as of late have been geared toward the progress of African-Americans. What’s quietly being done on Capitol Hill is something many people, especially minorities, are unaware of. The news that has been flooding the airwaves lately has been the police shootings of unarmed citizens — along with the fact that the prison system is overflowing with black and brown people largely due to mandatory minimum sentencing. The GOP has recognized these issues and has developed fastidious policy solutions to address them.

{mosads}Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) recently introduced legislation that impacts all Americans, but especially African-Americans. The senator from South Carolina has dropped one of the most important pieces of legislation this year and arguably in the last 30 years: an authorization of a half billion dollars for body cameras. Scott has publically said that he decided to introduce legislation for body camera funding after seeing the video of an incident in South Carolina that rocked the nation. The video depicted an officer shooting an unarmed motorist, Walter Scott, and the apparent planting of a taser gun on him as the justification of the shooting. Scott has sponsored the Safer Officers and Safer Citizens Act, which aims to protect officers and the citizens they serve. The legislation comes on the heels of a study conducted by Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology that showed that complaints against officers who wore body cameras decreased by almost 90 percent and that officers’ use of force decreased by 60 percent.

The GOP is also taking action on another front of special interest to blacks: criminal justice reform. The fact is that African-Americans are disproportionately represented in prisons and, more often than not, when individuals leave the prison system, they re-offend. A study by the National Institute of Justice showed that within five years of release, about 76.6 percent of released prisoners were arrested again.

I am reminded of an episode of “Orange Is The New Black” that illustrates this problem well. In the episode, the character Taystee left prison very happy to return back to the life she once knew, only to realize that she couldn’t acclimate because she didn’t have the tools to succeed outside of prison. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, supported and advocated by President Clinton, proved detrimental to the African-American community with its mandatory minimum sentencing that included nonviolent, low-level drug offenders. Clinton’s tough-on-crime posturing created an incarceration generation that mostly affected the African-American community. The law set aside billions of dollars for prisons but didn’t dedicate funding for rehabilitation for things like job training and education programs that inmates could obtain while incarcerated. Without those programs, recently released individuals had virtually zero chances of economic progression, leaving many to resort to illegal activity.

There are 2.4 million people in prison and 160,000 Americans serving life sentences — many, some would argue, due to the overreach of Clinton’s policies. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has introduced the Smarter Sentencing Act of 2015 that seeks to reduce mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent, low-level drug offenders, correcting an injustice created through the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.

Lastly, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) sponsored a bill which he says will reform the prison system and reduce the recidivism rate. He recently testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about the Corrections Act, saying that “These programs include things like prison jobs programs, drug rehabilitation, general education, vocational training, life skills management, technical education, mental health treatment, faith-based programs and victim impact courses.” For African-Americans, these bills have the potential to diminish the prison-industrial complex and restore faith in the criminal justice system. The GOP has taken note and seeks to create a system of fair, equitable and colorblind justice.

Caldwell is a federal lobbyist and Republican strategist with Caldwell Strategic Consulting and a member of Project 21. He is a contract lobbyist for the National Bar Association, which recently endorsed the Safer Officers and Safer Citizens Act. Follow him on Twitter @GiannoCaldwell.