Political Quotes

“Mr. President and Members of the Senate, as chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, I have mentioned publicly that I am open to certain Federal sentencing, or prison, reforms, and I have tried to make it very clear that I am very opposed to others. Today I wish to address the realities of drug sentencing in the Federal criminal justice system. I do so because there are many myths that surround this topic. The myth is that there are thousands of low-level drug offenders, such as people smoking marijuana, in Federal prison for very long terms. This is supposed to mean a waste of Federal tax dollars, overcrowding, and unfairness to people who should not be in prison. These myths are often used to justify lenient and, frankly, dangerous sentencing proposals in the U.S. Senate. One of those proposals is the so-called Smarter Sentencing Act. It is time to set the record straight, and that is why I am here. It is important to know how many people are in Federal prison for drug possession, who they are, and why they are in prison. Then it will be clear why it is unwise to make wholesale, one-way lenient changes in drug sentencing. In fiscal year 2013, the most recent year we have statistics, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission there were 2,332 drug possession cases in the Federal prison.…”