Why Its Not Soft On Crime to Support Criminal Justice Reform

-Source-The Foundry- In a Wall Street Journal editorial op-ed column last week Sen. Tom Cotton offered tepid support for prison reform measures in the FIRST STEP Act which the House passed in late May with overwhelming bipartisan support. The Arkansas Republican said the bill contains some flaws" but has worthy goals." The FIRST STEP Act is designed to enhance public safety by placing prisoners in rehabilitative programs to make it less likely that they will reoffend after they return to their communities. Cotton expressed hope that the bills flawswhich he declined to identifycould be fixed on a bipartisan basis but he decried the addition of a few modest sentencing reform proposals being urged by Sen. Chuck Grassley R-Iowa and others. Cotton labeled these proposals a jailbreak"a clever moniker to be sureand said he feared that Congress is going soft on crime." As former career federal prosecutors and political appointees in the Justice Department in the George W. Bush administration neither one of us has ever been described as being soft on crime." Nor we doubt have Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas a former judge and state attorney general and Mike Lee of Utah a former federal prosecutor. Yet all of us at least in principle support the measures that the Senate is currently debating.