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Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) speaking to students at the 2013 Young Americans for Liberty national convention. (Photo: Gage Skidmore)
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Back in January, when the Senate Judiciary Committee voted on a bill that would reduce sentencing for nonviolent drug offenders, there was an obvious divide that wasn’t partisan in nature, Buzzfeed reports.
The votes on the Smarter Sentencing Act reflect a significant division between the older establishment and younger tea party and libertarian-leaning Republicans.
“The average age of the three Republicans who voted for the bill — Sens. Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz — was 45.3 years old,” Evan McMorris-Santoro writes. “The average age of the five Republicans who voted against the bill: 69.4 years old.
Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador, 46, a former criminal defense attorney says that advances in law enforcement have rendered the drug laws of the 80’s obsolete.
“The issue is when you came of age on the justice issue and what your experiences have been,” he said. “If you look at the 1980s, crime was so high that you had to be really tough on crime. But law enforcement has made some huge advances on how to combat crime and what they need to do.”
“As somebody who is a fiscal conservative and as somebody who understands the importance of these types of crimes,” he added, “I think that’s why you’ve seen a group of young conservatives saying, ‘Hey, maybe we’ve been going about this the wrong way.’”
Here’s what the bill proposes to do:
Amends the federal criminal code to direct the court to impose a sentence for specified controlled substance offenses without regard to any statutory minimum sentence if the court finds that the criminal history category for the defendant is not higher than category two (under current law, that the defendant does not have more than one criminal history point).
Authorizes a court that imposed a sentence for a crack cocaine possession or trafficking offense committed before August 3, 2010, on motion of the defendant, the Director of the Bureau of Prisons, the attorney for the government, or the court, to impose a reduced sentence as if provisions of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 were in effect at the time such offense was committed.
Amends the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and the Controlled Substances Import and Export Act (CSIEA) to reduce mandatory minimum sentences for manufacturing, distributing, dispensing, possessing, importing, or exporting specified controlled substances.
Directs the Commission to review and amend its guidelines and policy statements applicable to persons convicted of such an offense under the CSA and CSIEA to ensure consistency with this Act and to consider specified factors, including: (1) its mandate to formulate guidelines to minimize the likelihood that the federal prison population will exceed federal prison capacity, (2) fiscal implications of changes, (3) relevant public safety concerns, (4) the intent of Congress that penalties for violent and serious drug traffickers who present public safety risks remain appropriately severe, and (5) the need to reduce and prevent racial disparities in sentencing.
Requires the Attorney General to report on how the reduced expenditures on federal corrections and cost savings resulting from this Act will be used to help reduce overcrowding, increase investment in law enforcement and crime prevention, and reduce recidivism.
In short, the bill includes measures that will help prevent lives from being thrown away for, say, marijuana possession, at the behest of mandatory minimums.
Eli Lehrer, president of the R Street Institiute — a libertarian think tank — believes that changing Republicans’ “War on Drugs” mindset is crucial for changing minds in other areas.
“The generational divide is enormously important,” Lehrer said. “If somebody was originally elected at a time when many of their constituents number one complaint was crime, that’s going to shape their political ideology for life, as it should.” It makes sense in the abstract that older Republicans would support policies that helped get them elected, but it turns out that their constituencies have changed and the pendulum has swung in the other direction.
Supporting bills like the Smarter Sentencing Act that will get them elected instead.
10 of the Republican sponsors are under 60 years of age and five are under 50.
