"Will New Bipartisan Criminal Justice Reform Plan Fly?"

The question in the title of this post is the headline of this notable new Crime Report piece by Ted Gest discussing the prospects for the newly introduced SAFE Justice Act (basics here). Here are excerpts:

As support for criminal justice reform has spread, many states have left the federal government behind when it comes to reducing their prison populations. There were 208,598 federal inmates as of yesterday, dwarfing the state with the most in the last national count: Texas, with about 168,000. Prisons are consuming at least a quarter of the U.S. Justice Department's budget, putting a squeeze on other spending.

Until yesterday, most discussion of the issue in Congress has taken place in the Senate, where several members, ranging from conservative Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky to liberal Democrat Cory Booker of New Jersey have filed competing bills that would change federal sentencing laws and help inmates return successfully to society.

Now, two key House members from both major political parties are weighing in with a "Safe, Accountable, Fair, and Effective Justice Act"-- dubbed SAFE -- they suggest could go even farther than the Senate measures.

They are James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, and Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat, who have long headed the House subcommittee dealing with crime. (Scott recently moved from the panel, officially called the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations, and turned his role over to Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas.)...

Sensenbrenner and Scott headed a House over-criminalization task force that has spent the last year and a half holding hearings on the issue that led in large part to the new bill. Sensenbrenner contended yesterday that over-criminalization is a "major driver" of the federal prison count, although he conceded that no one know how many such cases are filed.

Liberals are much more interested in drug cases, arguing that mandatory minimum penalties dating from the 1980s have ensnared thousands of Americans serving terms of five or ten years or longer for relatively minor violations. Scott said that two-thirds of federal inmates serving mandatory terms in drug cases are not narcotics kingpins. He argued that in the end, the nation's high incarceration rate "generates more crime than it stops."

One notable aspect of yesterday's announcement was the presence of a wide range of organizations supporting the bill, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the conservative Koch Industries, the American Conservative Union Foundation, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, and the Police Foundation.

Helpfully, this article provides this link to this full text of the new House proposal which is formally the "Sensenbrenner-Scott Over-Criminalization Task Force Safe, Accountable, Fair, Effective Justice Reinvestment Act of 2015."

Prior related post:

•  Bipartisan SAFE Justice Act with array of federal sentencing reforms introduced by House leaders