Senate Republicans yesterday put an end to a three-year effort by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) to thoroughly examine the U.S. criminal justice system and develop a series of top-to-bottom reforms.
The National Criminal Justice Commission bill would have created a bipartisan commission of experts charged with reviewing every aspect of the nation’s criminal justice system and offering concrete recommendations for evidence-based reforms. Over the past three years, the proposal had won support from more than 100 organizations from across the political spectrum, from the NAACP to the Fraternal Order of Police.
According to David Rogers of Politico, Senate Republicans argued that the commission would have violated states rights and wasted money:
….Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) took the lead in the GOP’s attacks, describing the commission as “an overreach of gigantic proportions” and “not a priority in these tight budget times.”
“We’re absolutely ignoring the U.S. Constitution if you do this,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) in closing…..
The bill called for fourteen-member commission, comprised evenly of Republicans and Democrats, to make non-binding recommendations.
“Today Senate Republicans blocked an important opportunity to make our criminal justice system more fair and effective,” Sen. Webb said following the 57-43 vote. “Their inflammatory arguments defy reasonable explanation and were contradicted by the plain language of our legislation.”
The politically charged climate stands in stark contrast to the support the bill garnered just one-year prior, when the bill sailed through the House with a voice vote.
It also runs against a growing movement taking place in many states, where advocacy groups are reaching across political boundaries to reprioritize their criminal justice spending.
“Criminal justice reform is increasingly not a right or left issue or a conservative or liberal issue,” said Mary Price, general counsel for Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) in a 2010 interview for a story I wrote for The Crime Report , detailing several such efforts, many of which have served to reduce prison populations while simultaneously cutting recidivism and crime rates.
The efforts have been led, in no small part, by conservatives not interested in continuing to pay the price for bloated corrections systems that too often act as “platinum revolving doors,” as one Chicago-area business leader and former Republican aide put it.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, about $74 billion in state and federal money is spent on prisons every year. Yet the failure rate of this system is astounding, with 67.5% of released individuals returning to prison within three years of their release, many of them for committing new crimes and creating new victims.
Libertarian leader and former Reagan adviser Grover Norquist (also interviewed for the above article) says that although cost is a big issue, public safety is also at stake–and should also be a conservative priority.
“At the end of the day,” he said, “(taxpayers) live in the same society that people returning from prison live in,” said Norquist.
Last year, Federal Bureau of Prisons Director Harley Lappin told Congress that either more prisons must be built, or there should be movement towards reducing sentences, and “significantly” increasing community-based alternatives such as home confinement. But, this year, legislators moved in the opposite direction, defunding the Second Chance Act, which authorizes federal grants to help released inmates access services including mentoring, finding housing and jobs, and substance abuse treatment. The Second Chance Act passed in 2008 with bipartisan support.
A unit for the elderly and infirm at Louisiana State Penitentiary, in Angola, La. Photo: Jessica Pupovac
Senator Webb reintroduced the bill on February 8, 2011. It was shot down yesterday, Oct. 20, just three votes short of the supermajority needed for passage. Sens. Blunt (R-Mo.) and Kirk (R-Ill.) voted against the bill, while Sens. Durbin (D-Ill.) and McCaskill (D-Mo.) voted in favor. For a full a list of how each Senator present voted, click here.
For his part, Sen. Webb says that his effort to get Congress to take a serious look at reforming the criminal justice system is not over.
“We will not back down. We will keep fighting for a comprehensive review of the justice system, with the help of the thousands of sheriffs, police, mayors and justice advocates who have joined us in pressing for reform,” he said.
