The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has been diligently working over the past two years in an effort to create a landmark commission to propose comprehensive criminal justice reform.  Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (a former federal prosecutor) signed on as one of 35 co-sponsors in the Senate, helping to push this bill (S.714) towards the Senate floor.  It seems they are working on one final amendment, and then it will be ready for a full vote.

Nobody has been such a champion as Sen. Jim Webb (VA), the sponsor and outspoken voice for the need to take stock in our criminal justice system.  One of the hallmarks for sincerity has been the effort to seek input from all points on the spectrum, from law enforcement to the formerly incarcerated, policy wonks to civil rights attorneys.  The bill has received endorsements from the Fraternal Order of Police, National District Attorneys Association, CATO Institute, and members of both political parties. 

Other supporters include those who have been calling for years to reform the criminal justice system.  So why now?  Many of the harsh statistics are steady in their climb.  Four times more mentally ill people are in prisons than mental health facilities.  Drug rehabilitation centers are scant and haphazard, with issues around insurance coverage and types of convictions allowed.  The criminality of being addicted or mentally ill combined with the costs of poverty to create a criminal justice system far more expansive than any in the world.  Although New Mexico is soon to join Minnesota as the only states where public employer’s (with exception) can’t ask about felony convictions on applications, the rest of the nation’s released prisoners find “checking the box” is a certain way to never get interviewed.

Why reform now?  Whereas prisons are big business, as corporations, investors, and employees are drawing billions from the taxpayers’ pockets… Reforming prisons is also big business.  True reformers are finding it easy to build momentum with those who wish to find “kinder” models of social control and economic dominance.  One of the primary motivators behind the 1965 Civil Rights bill was to counteract a power structure that has continually found ways to disenfranchise African-Americans through literacy tests, poll taxes, or criminal convictions.  African-Americans constitute roughly 50% of the nation’s prisoners, yet can only vote in Maine and Vermont. 

Senators Webb and Whitehouse need to be cautious as to who wiggles their way onto the 13 member blue ribbon commission.  Those who have advocated for the policies which got us into this situation will certainly want to be part of any new recommendations. “Justice Kennedy took special aim at the three-strikes law, which puts people behind bars for 25 years to life if they commit a third felony, even a nonviolent one. The law’s sponsor, he said, is the correctional officers’ union, ‘and that is sick. ‘”  Groups such as that would, at the least, seek such modest changes as to be cosmetic rather than substantial… and possibly seek to sabotage the entire process.