Thursday, November 15th 2018
WASHINGTON (Sinclair Broadcast Group) — Leaders in Washington took an important step toward reforming the U.S. criminal justice system Wednesday when President Donald Trump announced he would support legislation to shorten prison sentences for certain nonviolent offenders.
After years of adopting tough on crime laws and federal incentives for longer, harsher prison sentences, Trump said he would back a bipartisan prison reform bill that will reduce certain mandatory minimum prison sentences and begin to address America’s mass incarceration problem. Trump called on lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and both houses of Congress to “work hard and act quickly” to pass the appropriately titled First Step Act and send it to his desk.”I look very much forward to signing it. This is a big breakthrough for a lot of people,” Trump said.
For years, Congress has been pushing for bipartisan criminal justice reform with little success. In May, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed an early version of the First Step Act in a vote of 360 to 59. The early version of the bill enjoyed support from Republicans and Democrats, prison reform advocates and many in the law enforcement community because of provisions aimed at giving qualifying inmates a “second chance” and reducing recidivism through job training and education programs.
However, there were still arguments that it did not go far enough. Earlier versions of the bill did nothing to address unfair sentencing laws, like mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug crimesafrica that disproportionately impact communities of color and lower-income offenders. As a result of back and forth negotiations between the Senate and White House, a new version of the First Step Act will begin to reverse some of the country’s harshest sentencing laws passed at the height of the War on Drugs and the violent crime epidemic of the early 1990s.
Among the changes, the draft legislation will reduce certain mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses by five years while giving judges more discretion to deviate from mandatory minimums when sentencing nonviolent drug offenders. The bill would also retroactively apply the Fair Sentencing Act, a law passed in 2010 to reduce the sentencing disparity between powdered and crack cocaine. The bill will also end the “three strikes” rule, a policy that imposed an automatic life sentence for the third felony drug offense. In the draft legislation, a third strike will result in a 25-year prison sentence.
On Wednesday, President Trump said the First Step Act would fix the flaws in previous tough on crime legislation, specifically those associated with former President Bill Clinton’s 1994 crime bill. “Among other changes, it rolls back some of the provisions of the Clinton crime law that disproportionately harmed the African-American community,” Trump said, calling the crime bill “very disproportionate and very unfair.”
CLINTON AND THE LEGACY OF THE 1994 CRIME BILL
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, or the crime bill, was the single largest criminal justice overhaul in more than a generation and has a complex, controversial legacy.
The rates of violent crime peaked in 1991 after steadily increasing throughout the mid-1980s. The American public was fearful of gang and drug-related crimes, drive-by shootings, car-jackings, gun violence and the growing number of children caught in the crossfire. Murder rates skyrocketed in major cities like New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Houston, while many state and local governments were cutting back funds for law enforcement. The 1994 crime bill, passed by a Democratic Congress and president, was the federal government’s tough response to a historic crime epidemic.
In the 25 years since it was enacted, violent crime rates have declined by more than half. At the same time, the number of people behind bars has more than doubled, a fact many criminologists and prison reform advocates say is directly related to the law.
There are currently more than 2.3 million people behind bars in the United States, an incarceration rate of about 1 in every 100 adults. The increase in the U.S. prison population began in earnest in the 1980s, coinciding with President Ronald Reagan’s “War on Drugs” and the imposition of harsher, longer prison sentences for drug offenses. But the rate of incarceration accelerated at its fastest rate during the Clinton years. From the time Clinton won his election in 1992 to the time he left office in 2001, the number of people serving time increased by nearly 60 percent.
In the years after leaving office, Clinton acknowledged that his bill added to the mass incarceration crisis. “I signed a bill that made the problem worse, and I want to admit it,” he told the NAACP’s Philadelphia convention in July 2016.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, former President Bill Clinton was publicly confronted by a Black Lives Matter activist over his contribution to America’s mass incarceration crisis. Clinton defended the bill and claimed it was instrumental in reducing violent crime, gang violence and gun deaths. “Because of that bill we had a 25-year low in crime, a 33-year low in the murder rate,” Clinton argued. He added that the background check provision in the bill led to a 46-year low in the deaths of people by gun violence.
Crime rates did decline in the decades after Clinton’s criminal justice bill passed, but they were already going down before 1994, in part due to the waning crack cocaine epidemic and associated violence.
Provisions of the 1994 bill incentivized state-run prisons to incarcerate more people for longer periods of time. States were offered generous annual prison grants of up to $12.5 billion if they met federal requirements. For example, a state applying for a federal grant for prison construction had to show it had increased both the percentage of convicted violent offenders and increased the average prison sentences.
States were also required to ensure prisoners served at least 85 percent of the sentence imposed. In other words, a prisoner sentenced to 25 years would not be considered eligible for release before serving 21 years and three months. By 1994, more than half of the states met that requirement by enacting “truth-in-sentencing” laws.
The legislation also directed billions of dollars for state and local governments to put roughly 100,00 new police officers on the streets under the Community Oriented Policing Services program, or COPS. There is strong evidence that this provision positively contributed to the overall reduction in violent crime over subsequent decades.
The 1994 crime bill also cut back on inmates’ access to higher education and federally funded Pell Grants. According to the preponderance of research, educational opportunities and jobs training are the most consistent factors in reducing recidivism rates.
The Clinton administration is not solely to blame for the rise of lengthy prison sentences for nonviolent offenses and the explosion of the prison population that followed. Those tough on crime policies evolved and many of the mandatory minimum laws were implemented during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. By 1994, every state had adopted mandatory minimums, primarily related to drug offenses, murder, aggravated rape, felonies involving firearms and repeat felonies.
While the 1994 crime bill “did help entrench mass incarceration, it isn’t the sole culprit,” explained Ames Grawert, senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program. “It’s true,” he added, “that the creation of mass incarceration is indeed a bipartisan sin calling for bipartisan solutions.”
DO LENGTHY SENTENCES RESULT IN LOWER CRIME RATES?
The effects of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act matter, particularly as President Trump and the Congress consider repealing elements of it and moving forward with bipartisan prison reform.
Many law enforcement organizations have come out in favor of the sentencing reforms in the First Step Act. Both the presidents of the International Association of Police Chiefs and the Fraternal Order of Police stood beside President Trump when he announced the changes to the bill at the White House Wednesday.
The National District Attorney’s Association, whose members prosecute around 95 percent of the crime in the United States, applauded the “precision-like approach to sentencing guidelines” outlined in the draft legislation. The Major Cities Chiefs Association and Major County Sheriffs of America, who previously opposed the First Step Act, announced their support for the revised bill Tuesday.
The sentencing reform provisions have not been welcomed by everyone in the law enforcement community. Bob Bushman, the president of the National Narcotic Officers’ Associations’ Coalition (NNOAC), warned the revised legislation “allows the most serious drug traffickers (repeat traffickers with a high risk of recidivism) blanket reduction in sentences, which will only result in a greater burden on law enforcement resources along with more crime in our communities.”
Data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation shows the rate of violent crime began to increase in 2014 to 2016, ending the dramatic decline over the past two decades. The rates of violent crime have since stabilized and decreased slightly.
Like other proponents of strong consequences for felony offenses, Bushman warned, “As sentencing practices and laws providing leniency to offenders have become more fashionable, crime rates have risen.”
Measuring the effects of long prison sentences on crime rates has been a challenge for criminologists. Based on numerous studies, there is little evidence to suggest that longer sentences or the death penalty deter individuals from committing crimes. Though there is some evidence that lengthy prison sentences may reduce crime rates by locking up individuals who would have otherwise committed a crime. The magnitude of that effect is not clear.
Experts have struggled in recent years to understand the decline in crime rates over the past 25 years. “Rarely has there been such a rapid change in mass behavior,” observed Inimai Chettiar, the director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program.
In a 2015 report that surveyed numerous studies on crime and incarceration, the Brennan Center ultimately determined that the growth of the prison population and length of sentences have had “relatively little to do with the crime decline.”
More substantial factors were the increased number of police patrolling the streets as well as changes to policing. Specifically, the report cited an approach to policing that allows law enforcement to gather data and identify crime patterns and target resources at the highest risk areas. Other causes were related to social, economic and environmental factors, like an aging population, lower alcohol consumption, rising consumer confidence and economic conditions.
