In an op-ed, Rep. Mia Love discusses her proposed SAFE Justice Act, which would implement on a national level many of the strategies to reduce incarceration and crime that states such as Utah have successfully adopted.
Writes Love at Politic365:
Fundamentally, this bill ensures our system targets serious, violent and career criminals who legitimately threaten public safety while seeking alternative solutions for nonviolent and first-time offenders. Some of the evidence-based solutions contained in the bill include limiting mandatory drug minimums to drug-market leaders, expanding the use of probation rather than prison, giving judges greater discretion to give sentences that match crimes, creating and expanding drug-treatment and mental-health programs and using innovative in-prison recidivism reduction programs.
The bill also improves transparency by requiring the government to compile and publish all offenses that carry criminal penalties on a publicly available website. It improves community-based support programs. And it works to reduce duplicative prosecutions of offenders for the same crime at the state and local level.
We can make America safer without criminalizing every offense and imprisoning every minor offender. Our criminal justice system should not serve as just another example of federal overreach. Now is the time to get smart about crime. And I am hopeful the House of Representatives can follow successful states like Utah by passing criminal justice reform in the coming months.
