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May 18, 2018

Prez Trump pledges to sign prison reform that will be "best in the world"

As reported in this CBS News piece, both President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence spoke at a prison reform summit the White House this morning. Here are some of the details:

Pence, taking to the podium, called prison reform a top priority for the Trump administration. Pence said the current prison system "too often" misses an opportunity to help improve people's lives, and instead just makes American communities more dangerous. Pence said the Trump administration will continue to hold accountable those who break the law, but also recognize that too many ex-offenders feel they have nowhere else to turn once they leave prison, and return to crime. "Prison reform is about changing lives, and about changing communities," Pence said.

The White House has hosted such discussions before, although not in such a large summit. But the reforms Mr. Trump's administration has floated before mostly entailed better preparing inmates for reentry and reducing recidivism rates, not the sentencing reform that liberals and some conservatives have hoped for in recent years. Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who has made prison reform a top issue in his portfolio, said Mr. Trump is "all in" on prison reform, but explained why the White House's focus is narrow for now.

"Sentencing reform is something that people still have different opinions on," Kushner said, noting how Washington has been unable to come to a consensus on the matter for years. Kushner said he thinks the country's system of governance works well, and requires intense deliberation on pivotal issues like prison reform.

I was able to hear live a few of the comments by Prez Trump, and he pledged to sign the prison reform bill Congress delivered to him and he closed by asserting, in Trumpian fashion, that the prison reforms would be the "best in the world." People who know about prisons around the world, particularly in Scandinavia and other part of Europe, surely realize that Prez Trump is setting quite a high bar for US prison reform. But I was please to hear him make this commitment and continue to be hopeful that the energized support of the Trump Administration helps ensure that at least some form of federal criminal justice reform becomes a reality this year.

May 18, 2018 at 12:18 PM | Permalink

Comments

Can one have faith in any "commitment" from this supreme charlatan and snake-oil salesman?

Posted by: anon1 | May 18, 2018 12:22:02 PM

I would like to see the Republican Congress actually pass something he would veto. Unless it has some special sting to him or his power personally, why would he? Presidents veto few things, especially passed by their own party.

anon1 is right and at some point "pleased to hear him" in that context is ridiculous.

Posted by: Joe | May 18, 2018 1:56:55 PM

Anon1 and Joe. You sound a little upset.

Posted by: David Behar | May 18, 2018 5:08:23 PM

The comments can be taken as passion-less statements of reality.

A person can be an "asshole" or whatever and it's proper to say so. The term comes off as a bit angry, but it also sometimes is simply truthful.

Posted by: Joe | May 18, 2018 5:48:22 PM

Does reform include ALL criminal convictions or just drug-related cases

Posted by: Anonymous | May 18, 2018 6:02:46 PM

Is this a sign Mueller has something good - that Kushner and Trump are hedging their bets to reform a prison they may be in?

Posted by: Paul | May 18, 2018 10:49:39 PM

https://www.c-span.org/video/?445801-2/vice-president-pence-jared-kushner-deliver-remarks-prison-reform

White House Conference on prison reform was all pro-criminal. It included speeches by Texas former governor and expert on prison reform. The latter repeated the claim that crime has dropped in Texas, in the face of a population increase. The conference was moderated by a Yale Law School alumnus and Marxist radical, Van Jones.

This British whistleblower was driven out of the police, for reporting the downgrading of crime reports. One should consider police reports to be worthless indicators, for the purpose of political propaganda.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2600217/Police-fiddle-crime-figures-hit-targets-Even-rapes-not-recorded-say-MPs.html

Besides the artificial rejection and downgrading of reported crime, there are other factors in the reported decrease. The drop in the population of young adults, from the feminism caused drop in fecundity and in family formation has decreased the criminal cohort. The modernization of crime to the internet, makes current measures obsolete. The opiate overdose epidemic is killing criminals at a rate beyond the imagination of any death penalty advocate.

Posted by: David Behar | May 19, 2018 7:25:28 AM

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