Criminal Justice Reform in Congress Is On Hold, but Advocates Remain Hopeful
Trump and Republicans will wait until after midterm elections to try to pass a long-awaited prison reform bill.
President Donald Trump and the Republican leadership in Congress will wait until after this year's midterm elections to try and pass the FIRST STEP Act, a criminal justice reform bill backed by the White House and a bipartisan group of lawmakers and advocacy groups.
The decision came after a Thursday meeting at the White House with Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, Axios reports. The delay is yet another setback for federal criminal justice reform, but key players say they're still confident the bill will get a vote on the Senate floor—something that has eluded several previous criminal justice bills.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a central figure in crafting much of the bipartisan criminal justice legislation of the past few years, said in an emailed statement that he was confident the FIRST STEP Act has the votes to pass overwhelmingly and that he's "very encouraged by the leadership shown today by President Trump to make prison and sentencing reform a priority soon after the election and Leader McConnell's openness to bring it up this year."
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), another key Republican supporter of criminal justice reform, also says he is confident that the bill will pass.
In general, while activists are disappointed to see the bill put on hold, they're encouraged by the fact that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has committed to bringing it to the Senate floor.
"The result from yesterday's meetings with McConnell and the President are a huge step forward for reform efforts," says Jessica Jackson Sloan, national director of #cut50, a criminal justice advocacy group. "The FIRST STEP Act has already overwhelmingly passed the House. And now we have a commitment from Senate Majority Leader McConnell for a vote. President Trump has endorsed prison reform and is willing to craft a compromise on sentencing. We are closer than we have been in nearly a decade to passing robust federal legislation on this issue. While we hoped there would be a vote before the midterms, our bipartisan coalition will continue to push forward."
In 2016, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act was widely considered the best chance in more than a decade to get a criminal justice reform bill passed, but it never made it to the House or Senate floor, due in part to McConnell's reticence to hold a vote that would divide the GOP caucus.
The FIRST STEP Act started primarily as bill mandating many modest changes to the federal Bureau of Prisons system, such as increasing the amount of good-time credit that inmates can earn toward their release and expanding access to rehabilitative programming, halfway houses, and job training. It would also ban the shackling of pregnant inmates, among other measures.
The White House, particularly Kushner, has been building support among Republicans for the bill. Despite his tough-on-crime rhetoric, Trump has repeatedly praised and encouraged efforts to improve job prospects for returning inmates.
The House passed the legislation by a wide margin in May, but it faces a rougher road in the Senate. Progressive groups, as well as Grassley and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Il.), initially balked at supporting the bill because it didn't include any sentencing reforms. A new compromise version of the bill will reportedly include four sentencing changes, including one that increases judges' flexibility to depart from mandatory minimum sentences and one that makes recent changes in crack cocaine sentencing laws apply retroactively.
But those provisions have drawn the ire of some law-and-order Republicans in the Senate, as well as from Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a lifelong supporter of mandatory minimum sentences. The Justice Department sent a letter in July warning that the legislation would "further and significantly erode our long established truth-in-sentencing principles, create impossible administrative burdens, effectively reduce the sentences of thousands of violent felons, and endanger the safety of law-abiding citizens and law enforcement officers."
In a statement released Thursday, the Justice Department seemed to contradict other accounts of the meeting by painting the delay as a victory for its position.
"We're pleased the president agreed that we shouldn't support criminal justice reform that would reduce sentences, put drug traffickers back on our streets, and undermine our law enforcement officers who are working night and day to reduce violent crime and drug trafficking in the middle of an opioid crisis," Justice Department spokesperson Sarah Isgur Flores said.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.), a rabid opponent of reducing mandatory minimum sentences who enjoys eating birthday cake on a daily basis, met with Trump yesterday to voice his concerns over the bill. Cotton warned Trump that he could not afford to have a "Willie Horton" moment, The Washington Post reports:
Trump told Cotton, a close ally, that he opposes allowing fentanyl dealers out early from prison, which the emerging deal may do because it reduces mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug felonies, according to people who have reviewed the legislation. Another section of the emerging compromise may allow fentanyl dealers to earn "time credits" so they could serve out their sentence in home confinement.
Cotton, according to the official, responded to Trump by stressing to him that he can't have a "Willie Horton" situation on the president's watch—referring to the convicted murderer who committed rape and other felonies while out from behind bars under a Massachusetts furlough program. Horton was the subject of a 1988 campaign ad that criticized Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, then the Democratic presidential nominee.
Trump replied to Cotton: You're right, absolutely.
But Cotton is increasingly an outlier, even in his own party. The federal government has lagged behind the states, many of which have been overhauling their criminal justice systems. Holly Harris, the executive director of the Justice Action Network, points to reforms in Louisiana, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other jurisdictions.
"There are thousands of Americans wilting in jail indefinitely for low-level crimes or because they can't afford bail," Harris said in an emailed statement. "They are away from their families and their jobs, causing sometimes generations-long damage. Those in the Beltway who seek to delay a vote on federal criminal justice reform don't understand what is happening in their own backyards."
Supporters of the FIRST STEP Act will now have to walk a balance beam between left-leaning senators such as Cory Booker (D–N.J.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who are still lukewarm at best on the compromise bill, and conservative Republicans who could torpedo the legislation if they peel away enough GOP votes to give McConnell a headache.
Mark Holden, the general counsel of Koch Industries and chairman of Freedom Partners, is one of many figures from conservative advocacy groups who have been meeting frequently with the White House on criminal justice reform. In a statement, he called the delay "a major disappointment to the overwhelming majority of Americans who care about increasing public safety, and want Washington to take action."