US Senate Approves Reform of the Judiciary to Reduce the Number of Prisoners | Internationale

The United States is defined by the number of imprisoned citizens: two million and two hundred thousand people imprisoned behind bars, making it the winner of the world podium. The first government maintains an unfair, hard and racist system of justice that, for the first time in many years, will be reformed. A first step that could unite organizations and individuals with opposing ideological positions, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and ultra-conservative billionaires Koch, or Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand [19659003] It is not surprising that the law that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was able to pbad before the end of the year bears the name of First Step. McConnell was determined: Congress would not go on vacation until it had agreed. "If we do not tackle this work in a collaborative, productive way and do not speed up the process, I guess it's obvious that the Senate will have to stay open between Christmas and New Year to lead to well, "said Senator Kentucky last week. 19659003] Without any other legislative project that can be defined in this way, this standard is the first major bipartite measure of the Trump White House. And perhaps the only one to be signed in two years that still remains to the president. This is an exceptional pact: Democrats and Republicans agree to reform the federal penitentiary system at the request of President Trump. And being out of the game, the former Secretary of State for Justice, Jeff Sessions, defender to always impose the most severe sentence.

Trump had a tough time against crime. In 1989, long before aspiring to the White House, he published a series of ads in several New York newspapers demanding the death of those who had committed a crime. In 2017, already president, he had asked the police not to be so nice to the detainees and not to fear to protect their head when they were placed in patrol cars. "They protect their head with their hands so they do not hit, and they just kill someone! I tell you, take this hand, do not you?"

This time seems far away and the president, at the request of sometimes bizarre characters, has changed the tone of his speech. It was at that time that he commuted the life sentence of a 63-year-old woman arrested for money laundering and drug trafficking at Kim Kardashian's request. On this occasion, behind the great impetus given to First Step, was his son-in-law, who had been a victim of criminal justice when he saw his father behind bars for financing illegal electoral campaigns, made tax evasion and manipulated witnesses

First Step aims to put an end to the draconian laws of the 80s and 90s that required the country's prisons to arrest people and throw the key. The new law eliminates the infamous system known as the infamous "Three Crimes and" (19459007) three strikes and under which one who commits three consecutive crimes will be imprisoned for life.

It also ends, retroactively, by the disparity of convictions for possession of cocaine powder and crack, considered as two standards to measure and penalize drug addicts, with more severity for drug addicts . smoking crack, in the general black population and with more lightness for cocaine consumers, the white population. Thousands of prisoners serving sentences for crack-related crimes will have a reasonable reduction in their sentence.

Among those who fiercely opposed the law, Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas expressed his feelings in an opinion piece. in National Review and in a tweet. "Unfortunately, the law still has serious problems and allows many violent criminals to be put on the street in advance." Cotton and Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana introduced an amendment to the law excluding violent convicts and bad offenders.

Although important, the law will have a modest impact on reducing the number of prisoners. which only concerns prisoners in the federal penitentiary system, which accounts for less than 10% of the national total. According to Keith Wattley, director of UnCommon Law, a non-profit organization that provides legal and therapeutic advice to long-term offenders in California, the law is "a step in the wrong direction." "This law should benefit more companies operating private prisons than the incarcerated population." In an article published in the The New York Times Wattley states that it will increase "the use of electronic control systems created by private companies to control those who have been detained at home".

However, many celebrate the possibility of having a law that, in short, prohibits incarcerated women from having to give birth with chains.