Senator Holds Key to Sentencing Changes

By Isaac Stanley-Becker – Wall Street Journal – August 5, 2015

WASHINGTON—Less than six months ago, Sen. Chuck Grassley put down a marker for his colleagues: He vowed not to let judges go easy on traffickers of heroin, meth and LSD by handing down lenient penalties for crimes that he said imperil national security and public safety.

The promise carried weight. As head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Iowa Republican is the gatekeeper of all things crime and punishment, with the power to block changes to federal sentencing guidelines.

Now, as lawmakers in both parties and both chambers of Congress show greater interest in easing policies blamed for prison crowding, Mr. Grassley is presiding over final negotiations of a group he tasked with integrating assorted criminal justice proposals into a single package. Mr. Grassley, a four-decade veteran of Congress, said he plans to unveil a bill after Labor Day.

The most likely outcome of the talks, according to aides and lawmakers involved in the negotiations, is legislation that would combine programs to reduce recidivism and create more opportunities for early release with provisions giving judges some discretion to sentence below the mandatory minimum for certain drug defendants.

“I think it’s fair to say there are going to be a lot less people that are going to have mandatory minimums apply, but it’s not going to be this across-the-board cut,” Mr. Grassley said, warning that drastic reductions in sentences would weaken penalties for serious offenders.

Mr. Grassley’s position—which fellow committee members say has evolved since March, when he warned of a “leniency industrial complex”—reflects a readjustment on criminal justice among many conservatives, who increasingly are joining Democrats in calling for legislation aimed at reducing mass incarceration.

Policies begun in the early 1990s to crack down on crime are now widely viewed as overly harsh, sweeping up too many people, some of them nonviolent first-time offenders, and placing them in prisons and jails that are costly to maintain.

The U.S. spends up to $80 billion a year on corrections, roughly four times more than it did 20 years ago in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to a 2014 report from the Hamilton Project, part of the nonpartisan Brookings Institution.

President Barack Obama toured a federal prison in July to highlight his push for criminal-justice reform, and is joining forces with high-dollar conservative donors Charles and David Koch to achieve it. House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) last month endorsed a House bill designed to ease over-incarceration.

Concerns about mandatory sentencing have mounted in the last half-decade, but only recently have they been expressed by members of both parties, which used to compete to be seen as tough on crime, said Alison Holcomb, director of the American Civil Liberty Union’s Campaign for Smart Justice.

Among Republicans, the party’s libertarian wing was first to back sentencing overhaul, and more mainstream Republicans have followed. The breadth and prominence of GOP support in this Congress is unprecedented, Ms. Holcomb said.

Mr. Grassley, once seen as a chief roadblock to change, is in a position to convert that momentum into a bill committee members say could clear the Senate this year with bipartisan support now rare in a deeply divided Congress.

But it isn’t clear whether committee members with fervent objections to mandatory minimum sentences will sign onto a proposal shorn of the more sweeping changes they envision. More substantial reductions were embraced in a bill that cleared the committee last year but never made it to the floor. Its sponsors, Sens. Richard Durbin (D., Ill.) and Mike Lee (R., Utah), this year reintroduced the bill, which would halve mandatory minimum sentences for some nonviolent drug crimes and give judges more flexibility to hand down sentences below the mandatory minimum.

“He’s offering a different approach than we started with,” Mr. Durbin said of the agreement Mr. Grassley is brokering. “It’s a much different approach, and it’s a harder approach.”

Still, he said, he is encouraged that Mr. Grassley would entertain any legislation revising sentencing law. “Let me tell you, he was not even at the table initially, and now he’s at the table,” Mr. Durbin said.

A compromise bill may still encounter conservative resistance. One of the committee’s more cautionary voices is that of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), who said tough criminal code has been at the heart of a reduction in violent crime.

On the other side of the Capitol, Mr. Boehner has endorsed a bill by Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner (R., Wis.) and Bobby Scott (D., Va.) that would loosen some sentencing requirements, while also addressing probation and recidivism.

Molly Gill, government affairs counsel to the nonprofit Families Against Mandatory Minimums, said there are promising signs the judiciary chairman has changed his mind about sentencing, but the real proof would be in the legislation he puts forward.

“His reluctance, some might say, is infamous…he seems to be playing catch-up,” Ms. Gill said.

Some in Iowa have sought to hold Mr. Grassley to account for the ballooning prison population. A state report released last year estimated that Iowa’s prison population could swell 39% over the next decade. In May of this year, the Des Moines Register, Iowa’s largest newspaper, urged Mr. Grassley not to stand in the way of changes to federal sentencing laws.

Home on a recent weekend, Mr. Grassley faced questions about criminal justice at two town meetings—a surprise, he said, as it marked the first time this year constituents had raised the topic. “They were happy that it looked like we were going to get a bill,” he said.