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Bill Straub: To his credit, Rand Paul was one of first to raise important issue of criminal justice reform


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By most accounts Sen. Rand Paul’s presidential campaign has all the sizzle of a wet rag. But the Kentucky Republican should attract at least a modicum of credit for raising an issue during this surreal electoral battle for the White House that, in the not too distant past, has proved anathema to his party – criminal justice reform.

Stated flatly, the American justice system is a national disgrace that places too many individuals – many of them poor and black – behind too many prison walls for too long a period of time for relatively minor infractions when more economical and efficient alternatives are available.

The U.S. comprises only about 4.4 percent of the world’s population but it maintains 22 percent of the globe’s prison population, owing in large measure to policies implemented more than 30 years ago that imposed heavy sentences for non-violent drug offenders. As a result, corrections spending is now the second-fastest growing areas of state budgets behind Medicaid.

As of October 2013, the most recent numbers available, America’s incarceration rate was the highest in the world – worse than China, Cuba or any place else that can be imagined — at 716 per 100,000 population. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that 2.2 million adults were incarcerated in U.S. federal and state prisons and county jails in 2013 – about one out of every 110 people.

Rand Paul

Rand Paul

It is an unjustifiable, insane system and Paul, to his credit, was one of the first to emerge and point it out.

“Since taking office, I have found that one of the biggest impediments to finding a job is a criminal record,’’ Paul said in a statement on his website. “Upon examining our nation’s criminal justice system, I found that the system is in desperate need of reform. I have called for comprehensive reform measures to fix America’s broken criminal justice system, ease the burden on taxpayers, and break the cycle of incarceration for nonviolent ex-offenders.’’

Paul has filed at least five bills aimed at the problem, including the Justice Safety Valve Act, which would allow federal judges to depart from mandatory minimum sentencing laws if they find that it is in the best interests of justice to do so. The legislation would increase judicial discretion and allow judges to make individualized determinations about the proper punishment for defendants.
Paul warned there exists “an undercurrent of unease brought forth by our unjust criminal justice system,’’ a situation that presented itself as a result of recent incidents in Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere.

In its 2014 report, “Nation Behind Bars,’’ Human Rights Watch determined that the federal prison population grew by 721 percent beginning in 1980 and that state prison population jumped 240 percent over a similar 29-year period.

“In the 1980s, state and federal legislators began to adopt ‘tough-on-crime’ laws in response to rising crime rates, racial tensions, the emergence of crack cocaine, supposed threats to ‘traditional values’ from counter-culture movements and fears of perceived increases in numbers of immigrants and youth offenders,’’ the report said. “Many of the harsh laws adopted decades ago remain on the books, supplemented by newer ones, because ‘tough-on-crime’ remained a default approach for all-too-many politicians.’’

Kentucky proved particularly susceptible. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that Kentucky’s incarceration rate skyrocketed over a 35 year period by 391 percent — from 94 prisoners per 100,000 population in 1978 to 462 prisoners per 100,000 in 2013. Only 12 states experienced a greater increase during that time.

In 1978, according to the center, about 3,400 individuals were being held within the commonwealth’s corrections system. By 2014 that total had jumped to more than 21,000.

That ‘tough-on-crime’ approach has long been a hallmark of Republicans. President Richard Nixon, who assumed office in 1968 during what was once termed the ‘Days of Rage,’’ exploding over issues like the Vietnam War and civil rights, was elected in part because he maintained the “solution to the crime problem is not the quadrupling of funds for any governmental war on poverty but more convictions.’’ President Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of the GOP, further promised to get tough on street crime. His tenure coincided with the skyrocketing prison population.

Yet it is New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, viewed as a liberal Republican in his day, who takes the prize. In 1973, Rockefeller, who served as vice president under President Gerald Ford, it should be remembered, pushed through what the Drug Policy Alliance termed “extremely harsh prison terms for possession or sale of relatively small amounts of drugs. Although intended to target ‘kingpins,’ most people incarcerated under the laws were convicted of low-level, nonviolent, first-time offenses. The laws marked an unprecedented shift towards addressing drug use and abuse through the criminal justice system instead of through the medical and public health systems.’’

But the tide is beginning to turn in no small measure because of the efforts of lawmakers like Paul. In fact, there is an ironic “Nixon goes to China’’ twist to the movement – conservative Republicans are leading the charge.

Aghast at the drain corrections places on state and federal budgets and the violence rising incarceration rates continue to perpetrate on the nation’s African-American community, it is the political right – folks like former Attorney General Ed Meese and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Georgia Republican, suggesting alternatives for non-violent offenders.

Right on Crime, an organization founded by the conservative Texas Public Policy foundation, is providing ways to reform what its supporters maintain is an inefficient criminal justice system. Prisons, the group asserts, “serve a critical role by incapacitating dangerous offenders and career criminals but are not the solution for every type of offender. And in some instances, they have the unintended consequence of hardening non-violent, low-risk offenders – making them a greater risk to the public than when they entered.’’

“Low-level nonviolent drug and property offenders can often be punished and held accountable in ways that aren’t as expensive as prison but that are more effective in helping them become law-abiding taxpayers rather than tax burdens,’’ the group said.

“Everybody forgot what the mission in our society of the criminal justice system is,’’ said David Keene, former president of the National Rifle Association and chairman of the American Conservative Union. “It’s not simply to punish people. It’s not simply to extract retribution. It’s to provide a safer society. And to treat people humanely.”

Word is reaching Washington. The Senate Judiciary Committee, despite the reluctance of Sen. Charles Grassley, R-IA, the panel’s chairman, is piecing together a bipartisan, comprehensive justice-reform bill that is expected to restructure mandatory minimums and improve the system for transitioning the thousands of individuals who leave prison every year. Paul, who is not a member of the committee and is busy with his other part-time job – running for president – is not directly involved in the negotiations but he reportedly is making his ideas known.

Paul, more likely than not, will be fighting for prison reform from his seat within the world’s greatest deliberative body rather than the Oval Office for both the near and distant future. But sometimes, you know, you gotta give the devil his due.

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Washington correspondent Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. He currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.

To read more from Bill Straub, click here.


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