Bipartisan Congressional Committee to Reduce Federal Criminal Code

by Derek Gilna

There’s nothing like a good financial crisis in the federal government to focus politicians’ minds on saving money wherever they can, especially for their own pet projects. According to Congress, there are now plans to set up a new bipartisan task force to look into first counting and then reducing the number of offenses in the federal criminal code.

Unfortunately, prison rights advocates have seen and heard it all before. The last time Congress took a close look at federal criminal law, it resulted in the creation of the United States Sentencing Commission, which has contributed mightily to the explosion of mind-numbing, family-shattering, and community-destroying federal prison sentences. The sentencing guidelines have arguably cost the United States billions of dollars for building new prisons, hiring new jail guards, and expanding the number of assistant US attorneys and probation agents, not to mention perpetuating the human tragedy of excessive prison sentences.

Senator James Webb, a no-nonsense, respected Vietnam combat veteran from Virginia, introduced legislation several years ago to form a similar commission on the Senate side, and the legislation went nowhere. Webb decided shortly thereafter that one term in the Senate was quite enough.

Ironically, one of the architects of the newest task force is none other than Representative F. James Sensenbrenner, a Congressman from the suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, not known as a friend of prison reform or prisoners. He has long been an advocate for harsh sentencing and prison expansion, and is a reliable vote in favor of the Bureau of Prison (BOP) budget. Is it possible that he has had a change of heart?

Of course, Sensenbrenner describes his new bill not as prison reform, but as an issue of freedom for the common citizen. “Over criminalization is a threat to personal liberty and an expensive and inefficient way to deal with a lot of problems,” he is now quoted as saying.

The federal budget crunch aggravated by the 2013 sequester may have created the perfect storm for reform if Congressmen like Sensenbrenner have decided to participate. According to observers, the interest in reforming the federal criminal code has brought together disparate groups such as the conservative Heritage Foundation, the libertarian Cato Institute, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as the American Bar Association.

Skyrocketing federal prison populations and BOP budget woes have also caught the attention of otherwise disinterested opinion leaders, who note there are 4,500 criminal statutes and thousands of regulations that carry jail time, and over 80,000 people a year who are sentenced under federal criminal statutes, contributing to the overcrowded BOP prisoner population of around 220,000..

Minority organizations a few years ago, after many years of effort, finally got the attention of lawmakers, but only after the 100 to 1 sentencing ratios for crack cocaine offenses, which affected predominantly black defendants, decimated their communities. This marked the first major dent in federal sentencing guidelines since their inception in the eighties triggered a massive influx of convicted felons and launched a new, lucrative industry for wealthy, private prison companies, politically active unionized prison guards, and well-connected prison product providers.

Other Congressmen, like House Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert Goodlatte, who would be a non-voting member of the proposed task force, argued that federal law in recent decades has weakened the historical requirement that people possess a guilty mind before they can be found guilty of a criminal offense. “There is the issue of freedom and liberty… people must know they are doing something wrong before they can be found guilty.

Congressman John Conyers, a member of the House’s Congressional Black Caucus, said that “unduly expansive criminal provision in our law unnecessarily drive up incarceration rates.”

Lawrence Lewis a native Washingtonian, who ran afoul of the federal criminal code when he mistakenly diverted a back-up sewage system into an outside drain, knows what the Congressmen are talking about. After his error, which violated the Clean Water Act, he was sentence to one year of probation, a felony conviction that will stay with him forever. Lewis is just one of 788,517 people sentenced for federal crimes between 2000 and 2010.

Lewis unknowingly violated a “strict-liability” statute, which meant that the government did not have to prove he knew he was doing anything wrong. For a man with virtually no prior contact with the police, it was the low point of his existence.

Apparently, however, the motivating factor for Congress’ newest concern with criminal justice is not the human costs for such senseless prosecutions and convictions, but the financial costs.

It may all, in the end, turn out to be just another pronouncement that goes no further. The fact that no comparable bill has been introduced in the Senate does not bode well for the passage of the proposed legislation, and it is also not known whether such legislation would be signed by the President.

Source: Wall Street Journal

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