Congressman Cohen Hails Judiciary Committee Passage of Bipartisan Prison Reform Bill

[WASHINGTON, DC] – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, today released the following statement on the House Judiciary Committee’s passage of H.R. 759, the Recidivism Risk Reduction Act, the bipartisan prison reform bill. Video of the Congressman’s remarks at the House Judiciary Committee meeting can be found here.

“The Recidivism Reduction Act is an important step toward reforming our criminal justice system, and I want to thank Chairman Goodlatte, Ranking Member Conyers, Chairman Sensenbrenner and Ranking Member Jackson Lee for all of their hard work to get this bill this far,” said Congressman Cohen. “It is progress, and I hope this committee will continue to work on these issues, so we can achieve even more progress moving forward.

But I would have liked this bill to have addressed two other issues. I would have liked to have seen the Recidivism Reduction Act either reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule II drug under the Controlled Substances Act or remove it from the controlled substances list entirely. Public opinion and law enforcement agents alike agree that marijuana is just not that dangerous. It can have legitimate medical value that can save lives, such as my constituent 3-year-old Chloe Grauer who passed away after not being allowed to receive CBD treatment.

I also would have liked this bill to address the need for qualified non-violent, law-abiding ex-offenders to have the ability to petition a court to have their convictions expunged. A criminal record, even for a minor, nonviolent offense, can pose a barrier to employment, education and housing opportunities--the very things necessary to start one's life over, and I have repeatedly introduced legislation to prevent this from happening.”

H.R. 759, the Recidivism Risk Reduction Act would establish a new system to be administered by the Bureau of Prisons to allow federal prisoners to earn reductions of their time in prison by participating in programs or activities that will likely reduce recidivism. The bill allows prisoners to earn credits to reduce their time and will ensure that the reassessments of risk are based not on static risk factors, but on dynamic factors that prisoners are capable of changing in prison and that the risk reduction programming will be designed to address. H.R. 759 also prevents the use of shackles on pregnant prisoners, provides for de-escalation training to prison guards, safeguards the attorney-client privilege with respect to email communications between prisoners and their attorneys, and improves the mechanisms that allow for elder and compassionate release.

Over the past four decades, the U.S. prison population has skyrocketed. From 1973 to 2009, the U.S. prison population (including both state and federal) grew from 200,000 to 2.2 million persons. During the period of 1980 to 2013, the rate of imprisonment by the federal government grew 518 percent, increasing from 11 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents to 68 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents. As a result, annual federal spending on prisons during that same period increased from $970 million to $6.7 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars.

The prison population is not just large, but also racially disparate. According to the Bureau of Prisons, 38.7 percent of the federal prison population is African-American. African-Americans are only 13.2 percent of the overall U.S. population.