Leaders Find Common Ground at Bipartisan Summit on Criminal Justice Reform

Civil and Human Rights News 04.1,15

By Stephanie Moore, a Spring 2015 Leadership Conference Education Fund Intern

It isn’t every day that you see Koch Industries sponsoring an event with the ACLU, and Van Jones co-hosting with Newt Gingrich and Pat Nolan. On March 26, the #Cut50 Bipartisan Summit on Criminal Justice Reform convened with more than 90 speakers to address criminal justice reform in an atmosphere of national partisanship and political gridlock. Panelists discussed over-criminalization, mandatory minimum sentencing, juvenile justice, felony disenfranchisement, recidivism reduction, and community re-entry.

Here are a few startling facts from the summit:

  • 1 in 3 Americans has a criminal record
  • 2 out of 3 people who served time will return to prison within 3 years – for juveniles, the rate is 1 in 2 within 3 years
  • African Americans are jailed four times more than Whites
  • 1 in 13 African Americans is a disenfranchised voter because of a current or prior felony, and in Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia, 1 in 5 African-American men is unable to vote

Gov. Nathan Deal, R. Ga, spoke of his state’s accomplishments in the past three years, including reforms concerning adult non-violent offenders, juvenile justice, and re-entry programs. He argued that the bottom line in criminal justice reform was to make a decision between “locking up those you’re afraid of and those you’re simply mad at.”

So what can we expect to see proposed in this Congress? The Smarter Sentencing Act of 2015 aims to modernize federal drug sentencing polices by granting more discretion to federal judges in non-violent drug offense cases, along with amending the Controlled Substances Act to reduce mandatory minimum sentences for certain substances. Also, many legislators at the bipartisan summit expressed intentions to focus on a two-pronged approach to reduce mass incarceration and recidivism: address juvenile justice reform and alternatives to incarcerating non-violent drug offenders and those with mental illnesses, and allocate more resources toward re-entry programs

What does all of this mean? In an interview, Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference Education Fund and The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said “The American criminal justice system is bloated, ineffective, and badly in need of reform.” When addressing bipartisan action, Henderson asserted, “This is a special moment to address the crisis.”

Watch the entire summit here: