U S JUSTICE ACTION NETWORK (FORMERLY JUSTICE CONSENSUS ACTION NETWORK)

Law Enforcement/Crime/Criminal Justice

In the direction of comprehensive criminal justice reform at the federal level: Made contacts in support of S. 467, the CORRECTIONS Act, plus a package of sentencing reforms that will attract sufficient bipartisan consensus to pass into law. S. 467, the `Corrections Oversight, Recidivism Reduction, and Eliminating Costs for Taxpayers In Our National System Act of 2015' or the `CORRECTIONS Act', a bill to reduce recidivism and increase public safety. The bill: Requires all eligible offenders to undergo regular risk assessments to determine whether an offender has a low, medium, or high-risk of re-offending; Excludes all sex offenders, terrorism offenders, violent offenders, repeat offenders, major organized crime offenders, and major fraud offenders from earning credits under the program; Encourages participation in recidivism reduction programs and productive activities, like prison jobs; Contains no new authorized spending, and requires the Bureau of Prisons to partner with faith-based groups and non-profits; Allows earned time credits for low-risk prisoners of up to 10 days for every 30 days that the prisoner is successfully completing a reoffender reduction program or productive activity; Allows medium risk prisoners to earn a 5 day for 30 day time credit while successfully completing recidivism reduction programs and productive activities -- These offenders would only be able to use these credits if they demonstrate a substantial reduction in their probability of reoffending as a result of participation in programs; Does not allow high risk offenders to use any time credits unless they reduce their risk levels to a lower tier; Would allow certain low risk offenders who demonstrate exemplary behavior to spend the final portion of their earned credit time on community supervision. To attract sufficient bipartisan consensus, sentencing reforms must be thoughtful and targeted to specific problems. Discussed retroactive application of the Fair Sentencing Act, expansion of the safety valve to include more lower level drug offenders, reducing the use of the 10-year mandatory minimum sentence for lower level drug offenders, reducing sentencing enhancements for prior drug felons under 21 U.S. Code 841 and 851, eliminating the stacking of sentencing enhancements for firearms under 18 U.S. Code 924(c), and eliminating life sentences for juveniles. Also discussed expansion of elderly release and use of compassionate release. Also began to discuss a big problem that Congress needs to address: the expansion of the federal criminal code and federal regulations and the associated disappearance of mens rea. The Code of Federal Regulations is over 80,000 pages. It is simply beyond the capacity of any person - or even any organization - to keep abreast of this number of regulations. Moreover, because many of these criminal regulations lack sufficient, or any, mens rea element, a person can run afoul of many of those laws without having any knowledge the laws exists or any intent whatsoever of breaking the law. With the explosion of the regulatory state and its use to pursue criminal charges, the mens rea requirement is all the more important. Throwing people in prison who not only lack the intent traditionally required for incarceration but who often pose very little risk to society and have a similarly low risk of recidivism only serves to exacerbate the challenges of an already expensive and crowded prison system.