Tim Scott: “Mr. Chairman, the bill, underlying bill, authorizes $500 million a year in spending. This amendment strikes prison…”

“Mr. Chairman, the bill, underlying bill, authorizes $500 million a year in spending. This amendment strikes prison construction as allowable use of the money. Mr. Chairman, this is for two reasons. First, $500 million nationally in prison construction cannot have any effect on crime. For example, Virginia is in the process of spending almost $1 billion a year on new prisons over the next 10 years. If all of Virginia shared this money, that is, if we qualified, which we do not, but if all the money were used in prisons, instead of $1 billion a year we would be spending $1.01 billion a year on prisons, obviously not enough to cause a difference in crime that anybody would notice. The second reason, Mr. Chairman, is that if we used up the money on prisons, there would not be anything left over for the other worthwhile uses of the money. Mr. Chairman, we already lock up more people than anywhere else on Earth. Some communities have more young men in jail than in college, and several States already spend more money for prisons than higher education. So States do not need the encouragement to build prisons, they need encouragement to spend money on other initiatives where little money can actually make a difference in public safety.”