Cory Booker: “earlier this month, Senator Rand Paul and I introduced the Record Expungement Designed to Enhance Employment--or…”

“earlier this month, Senator Rand Paul and I introduced the Record Expungement Designed to Enhance Employment--or REDEEM--Act, a bill that takes important new steps to ensure that youth and adults caught up in the criminal justice system have an opportunity at a second chance to turn their lives around rather than returning to a life of crime. I thank Senator Paul for joining with me to craft this legislation. This important bipartisan legislation would establish much needed, sensible, pragmatic reforms that keep kids out of an adult system in the first place, protect their privacy so a youthful mistake does not haunt young people throughout their lives, and make it less likely that low-level nonviolent offenders reoffend. As the former mayor of Newark, I believe strongly in holding people accountable for breaking our laws, but I also believe it is important that we do everything possible to ensure that when people leave prison and return to their communities, they have every chance at becoming productive members of our society. No one deserves more of an opportunity to leave their past behind than our children. Far too often, kids are easily manipulated into making a youthful mistake that should not follow them for the rest of their lives. That is why I advocate that we fix our Nation's broken criminal justice system, a system that has taken an unimaginable and I believe unsustainable toll on families and communities.…”