Criminal Justice Commission Gets a Leg Up

A bipartisan bill that would form a commission to evaluate the U.S. criminal justice system took a step forward yesterday, passing the Senate Judiciary Committee by a voice vote. A note to newly elected Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown: please don't kill this on top of healthcare, too.

Sponsored by Virginia Sen. Jim Webb (left), the bill raises the hope that the federal government might finally put the brakes on the tough-on-crime prison explosion that's wasted millions of lives and billions of dollars over the past four decades. Groups from Families Against Mandatory Minimums to the Sentencing Project immediately praised the committee's passage of the bill. Yet even among criminal justice reformers, not everybody's on board.

Writing at TalkLeft, Jeralyn says she's worried the work of the commission could become a wall of talk that stops real reform from happening for a couple of years. As she writes, "I hope this does not result in an 18 month moratorium on the passage of much needed crime bills that have been languishing for months and years" -- bills to equalize the crack-powder cocaine disparity, for example, or to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences or increase federal good time.

Jeralyn points to a real concern, but ultimately, the potential value of this wide-ranging commission outweighs fear that it'll prompt a possible reform slowdown. There are so many factors working against criminal justice reform that the last thing we need to do is get anxious about what really is a step forward here -- a move towards a much-needed national spotlight on reform.

But ultimately, as Jeralyn notes, further evaluations and research isn't exactly all that's needed. More important is citizens keeping pressure on lawmakers to pass individual reforms, even as the commission goes about its investigation. As Jeralyn points out, we have all the research we need on the injustice of crack sentencing. The reform to eliminate it should be passed now.

And yet we won't fix our massive incarceration problems with such piecemeal, individually targeted bills. We need a mandate from Congress for states to invest in treatment, rather than incarceration, and for states to make sweeping efforts to reduce recidivism. Webb's commission aims, appropriately, for such grand reforms. And while it can't stand on its own, it has the potential to to really catalyze a bipartisan effort toward changing the system.

Photo Credit: Office of Sen. Webb