Tim Scott: “this amendment would allow tribal governments to opt out of the coverage of the bill and the administration of their…”

“this amendment would allow tribal governments to opt out of the coverage of the bill and the administration of their systems of justice in the manner that we allowed them to opt out of the application of the Three Strikes and You're Out law that we passed several years ago to avoid the unintended racial and disproportionately negative impact. Since the bill only applies in Federal jurisdictions, the vast majority of the cases affected would involve Native Americans. This means the bill will affect Native Americans in a disproportionately negative manner when compared to similar offenders in the same State as the Native American reservation. Based merely on the location of the offense, whether you are on the reservation or right outside of the reservation, you could have vastly different sentences, as vastly different as probation in one case and life imprisonment for exactly the same offense and offenders. There is no evidence that this particular problem, sex crimes against children, is predominantly a Native American problem, so why are we singling them out for the draconian treatment? Because this bill only applies in Federal jurisdiction, it will have no effect on the vast majority of cases that have been mentioned today. The only good thing about it is, it will only affect a few cases, but unfortunately, an overwhelming proportion of those cases will be cases affecting Native Americans. I would hope that the House would adopt the amendment.”