Webb To Take On Nation’s Prisons and Jails
Alarmed by prisons that are clogged with mentally ill people, drug users and other non-violent offenders while well-armed gangs and drug lords often go unpunished, Virginia Sen. Jim Webb will launch a wide-ranging and politically risky campaign today to overhaul the nation’s criminal justice system. As reported by the Hampton Roads Pilot.
With nearly 2.4 million Americans now behind bars, Webb said, “our incarceration rate has exploded…. But at the same time we aren’t really solving the problems.” With backing from senior Democratic senators and quiet encouragement from President Barack Obama, Webb will introduce legislation to create a bipartisan commission on criminal justice reform. Webb said he wants the commission to educate itself and then the American public on some little-understood realities about crime and punishment.
His bill reads like an indictment of the current system, noting that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, that minorities make up a disproportionately large share of prison populations, and that half of prisoners will return to prison within three years of release. Webb said he hopes that once people begin to understand that such a high rate of imprisonment has done little to stop violent crime or drug trafficking, they’ll support changes … Webb’s bill does not suggest specific reforms but directs the commission to make suggestions that would reduce incarceration rates and keep mental patients and nonviolent offenders from going to prison …
Webb has briefed Obama’s staff on the plan and discussed it with the president earlier this week. He has secured pledges of support from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Democratic whip Dick Durbin of Illinois and expressions of interest from prominent Republicans, including Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking GOP member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Webb also has talked the issue over with Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who invited Webb to his office and shared the texts of several speeches voicing his own concern about criminal sentencing. The senator said Kennedy told him that too many judges “don’t understand prisons” and “don’t pay that much attention to what happens after we’ve moved the cases.”