Feds Ready to Tackle Questions of Crime

Federal lawmakers on Tuesday took another step forward toward creating a commission to review the nation's criminal justice system – the first such review in more than 40 years.

The U.S. House of Representatives yesterday voted in favor of the National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2010, a bipartisan measure carried by Massachusetts Rep. Bill Delahunt, and joined by 27 other lawmakers including Central Texas' own GOP Rep. Lamar Smith (noticeably absent from the list of co-sponsors is Austin Dem Rep. Lloyd Doggett and Houston's Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee). The measure calls for a comprehensive review of the criminal justice system, including federal, state, local and tribal systems, to ensure fairness and cost-effectiveness.

If the measure passes, which it is ultimately expected to do, it would be the first comprehensive system review since the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration and Justice was established in 1965. In that time a lot has changed: the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world – five times the world's average rate (go USA!) – a disproportionate number of whom are minorities (black males have a 32% chance of serving time at some point during their lives, while white males – a far larger proportion of the overall population – have just a 6% chance of doing time). Meanwhile, the number of people on parole and probation has skyrocketed along with the growing prison and jail population: 1 in 31 adults is on paper with the criminal justice system (most thus ineligible to vote, and barred from funding for educational or housing assistance), a 290% increase since 1980.

And what crimes have most increased the on-paper population? Why, drug-related crimes, of course: The number of drug offenders doing time has increased 1,200% since 1980. Nonetheless, there appears no reduction in the availability of drugs, according to federal reports.

Given the seemingly intractable problems associated with the current status quo, it is perhaps not too surprising that the measure to create a new criminal justice commission has taken hold. Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb has been leading the charge, and his companion measure has been voted out of the Senate's Judiciary Committee and is awaiting hearing by the full chamber. (Notably, neither of Texas' law-and-order senators, John Cornyn – who sits on the Judiciary Committee – and Kay Bailey Hutchison joined the bill's 39 co-sponsors.)

Julie Stewart, president and founder of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, applauded yesterday's House vote: "Today's vote shows Congress is aware that our nation's criminal justice system is in need of major repair," she said in a statement. "We know too much about crime and rehabilitation, about what works and what doesn't work with regard to recidivism, to continue to mindlessly sentence minor offenders to long prison sentences and inflexible mandatory minimum penalties. The moral bankruptcy of such policies is now being compounded by the fiscal bankruptcy it is visiting upon state and federal governments."