Seven months ago, Senate Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) stood on the Senate floor and accused criminal justice reformers on his panel, both Republican and Democrat, of being held captive by a “leniency industrial complex.”
On Thursday, those colleagues stood behind him at a press conference as he revealed support for many of their proposals in a package he called “the biggest criminal justice reform in a generation.”
“It’s a product of a very thoughtful bipartisan deliberation by the Congress,” Grassley said. “There are things in here that each of us like. There are items that each of us would rather do without. But this is how the process works here in Congress.”
The legislation would lower some mandatory minimums—most notably, the 10 year punishment floor for certain non-violent drug offenders. It would also grant more opportunities for early release to minor criminals, and many of its provisions would apply retroactively to those currently incarcerated.
“We believe that there are people who are incarcerated today for lengthy sentences at great expense who frankly should not be in those prisons,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said.
Durbin said he believed the bill would easily pass the Senate, but wasn’t sure if it would pass the House.
The House Judiciary Committee, at least, seems generally receptive to the development. A Republican staffer told The Sentinel “the committee plans to introduce legislation soon,” and referred to exploratory initiatives launched this summer by Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and ranking member John Conyers (D-Mich.). The effort, the aide said, is designed to take “a step-by-step approach to address a variety of criminal justice issues through legislation, including over-criminalization, sentencing reform, prison and reentry reform, protecting citizens through proved criminal procedures and policing strategies and civil asset forfeiture reform.”
But the receptiveness of the House would not even be an issue if not for the Senate Judiciary Committee chair—the subject of wide praise Thursday from former adversaries.
“We didn’t start off in the best of circumstances Sen. Grassley was very skeptical. And said so. Publicly. On the floor. Repeatedly,” Durbin said, as the chair and committee ranking member Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) shared a laugh behind him.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said reform efforts “really came to life when he put his staff into that process.”
“And they really engaged and the result of it is is this really remarkable piece of legislation,” he said.
Whitehouse has been working for years with fellow committee member and current House Majority Whip, Sen. John Cornyn on sentencing guideline revisions that influenced legislation revealed Thursday. Sens. Durbin and Mike Lee (R-Utah), too, have worked on a bill incorporated into the package.
The issue, however, took on added urgency last year in the wake of prominent police killings of unarmed black men. The high profile incidents of state violence against people of color sparked Black Lives Matter, a nationwide movement organized to confront what is widely seen as a de facto racist regime.
“The criminal justice system that I knew growing up in a relatively affluent community in Northern New Jersey and walking around the campus of Stanford University is dramatically different from the justice system experienced by folks who live with me in Newark, N.J,” said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), the former mayor of Newark, one of two black senators, and a strong supporter of criminal justice reform.
The other black lawmaker in the upper house–another long-time supporter of the overall move to amend the criminal justice system, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.)–spoke right after Booker, praising the bipartisan spirit of the day.
“Sen. Grassley, I think you have amazed many people,” he said.
Among those amazed, at least with parts of Grassley’s efforts, are non-profit organizations working to reduce America’s world-beating prison population. Families Against Mandatory Minimums president Julie Stewart called the reform bill “the most significant pieces of sentencing reform legislation in a generation.” The American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony Romero said that “the bill offers many promising reforms.”
But both groups noted some reservations.
“We have deep concerns about other aspects, especially the expansion of some mandatory minimum sentences,” Romero said.
“It’s a shame that some lawmakers have not broken their addiction to mandatory minimums despite mountains of evidence proving they aren’t necessary or proven to deter crime,” Stewart noted. “We will work to strike these useless provisions, which fly in the face of the rest of the bill’s smart reforms.”
