President Trump endorses bipartisan prison reform
(source: New York Post)
President Donald Trump on Wednesday (Wed Nov 14, 2018) announced that he supports the efforts to pass a bipartisan prison reform bill called the FIRST Step Act.
“Today, I am thrilled to announce my support for this bipartisan bill that will make our communities safer and give former inmates a second chance at life after they have served their time,” said Trump in the Roosevelt room.
He added that his intention “to ‘Hire American’ includes those leaving prison and looking for a very fresh start — new job, new life.”
His son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, has taken over criminal justice reform efforts since joining the White House and has been working on crafting the FIRST Step Act and building bipartisan support for it alongside a group of senators.
Trump excitedly added “I’m waiting. I’ll be waiting with a pen and we will have done something that hasn’t been done in many, many years, and it’s the right thing to do.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised to bring the bill to a floor vote if there are 60 votes in favor of it but added that it would probably not get a vote by year’s end.
He indicated that there may not be enough time to consolidate different iterations of the measure for the required number of senators to agree on. “We don’t have a whole lot of time left, but the first step is to finalize what proponents are actually for. There have been a lot of different versions floating around. And then we’ll whip it and see where the vote count is.”
If the deal passes, it would shorten select federal mandatory minimum sentences and extend the 2010 law called Fair-Sentencing Act that helps federal prisoners convicted of crack offenses who are serving disproportionately long sentences.
The Fair Sentencing Act was passed to counteract the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and Bill Clinton’s 1994 anti-crime law, as part of the war on drugs that aimed to appease a section of the population who perceived him as “not tough enough on crime.”
Retrospectively, it was deemed a racist law, as it disproportionately affected minorities and inner-city communities. This is especially worthy of mention since Trump has been called a racist and his support of the FIRST Step Act would seem to show otherwise. However, critics of the deal say that it doesn’t specifically address the racial disparities in the criminal justice system and will not lower the imbalanced targeting of minorities.
President Trump Makes an Announcement Regarding H.R. 5682, the “First Step Act”