Relief for prisoners

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump said Wednesday he would support a bipartisan deal on criminal justice reform that could become the first large-scale prison law overhaul in recent years.

Senators from both parties agreed to a proposal this week that builds on legislation the House passed in May. That bill, called the First Step Act, focused on back-end reforms such as improving prison conditions and assisting inmates reentering society. The Senate version adds front-end reforms that ease mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. It also cuts the “three-strikes” penalty to 25 years in prison instead of a life sentence for nonviolent drug offenses and reduces the “stacking” sentencing policy that makes it a federal crime to have a firearm while committing another crime. It retroactively applies a 2010 law reducing harsher penalties for crack cocaine convictions than for powder cocaine. And the bill introduces more measures aimed at reducing recidivism while seeking to improve conditions for female inmates.

At a White House event, the president said the tentative legislation would “make our communities safer and give former inmates a second chance at life after they have served their time.”

In recent years, Congress has only made modest advances on criminal justice reform. In 2007, it gave grants to programs focused on reintegrating inmates into society. In 2010 legislators passed a bill lowering sentences for possession of crack cocaine. Meanwhile, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with more than 2.3 million people imprisoned, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. African-Americans and Hispanics are overrepresented in U.S. prisons compared to the overall population, according to Pew Research Center.

The bill faces a few obstacles before it reaches the president’s desk. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Wednesday he couldn’t guarantee a vote on the measure in the lame-duck session, and he wanted to see how broad support was before bringing it to the Senate floor. The bill is competing with other unfinished business, including funding the government and the farm bill, which leadership wants to wrap up before the new Congress takes over in January.

Some GOP lawmakers, primarily Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, remain stalwartly opposed to the initiative. And some Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, want to hold out until they have more leverage in the new Congress to try and get more expansive reforms.

The bill has been endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police, which is the largest U.S. law enforcement labor organization, and a range of liberal and conservative groups, from the Heritage Foundation to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Now that the measure has Trump’s endorsement, sponsors Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick Durban (D-Ill.) are more likely to push for its introduction as soon as possible.

Steven Harris, a policy director at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said he hopes Congress will move this bill now instead of theorizing about what could be done in a future legislative session.

“This legislation recognizes that the majority of people who are incarcerated will one day be released,” Harris said. “So we need to be making sure that … these individuals are actually able to return to communities and be productive members of society.” —Harvest Prude