Pence: Time to ‘rethink’ criminal justice reform bill signed by Trump

Mike Pence on Wednesday said there’s a need to “rethink” the criminal justice reform legislation signed by then-President Trump while Pence was serving as vice president, calling for tougher penalties for serious offenders.

“I think we need to take a step back and rethink the First Step Act,” Pence said at a CNN town hall event in Iowa hours after declaring his candidacy for the White House. 

“I mean we’ve got a crime wave in our major cities, and I think now more than ever we ought to be thinking about how we make penalties tougher on people who are victimizing families in this country,” Pence added. “So on that point I would agree with others.”

Pence’s comments reflect how sharply the Republican position on crime and criminal justice reform has shifted in the roughly four years since Trump signed the bipartisan bill into law.

The First Step Act, which was championed at the time by Trump and others, reduced mandatory minimum sentences, expanded credits for well-behaved prisoners looking for shorter sentences and aimed to reduce recidivism.

But Trump has shied away from the bill, instead calling for severe crack downs in cities facing increases in crime. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), another leading Republican presidential candidate, said last month he would push to repeal the First Step Act if elected.

Pence blamed the “crime wave” in major U.S. cities on liberals who have called to “defund the police,” which was a common rallying cry in 2020 in response to multiple police killings of Black Americans. 

President Biden and other Democratic leaders have repeatedly said they do not support defunding the police. The White House has instead accused Republicans of refusing to back law enforcement, pointing to GOP criticism of the FBI, its downplaying of attacks on law enforcement on Jan. 6, 2021, and its opposition to legislation passed in 2021 that included additional funding for local police.