Political Quotes

“This amendment would reprogram $10 million from the prison account and put it in the juvenile justice programs designed to reduce recidivism, gang violence, and gun crimes. Ms. Jackson Lee, a fellow member on the Judiciary Committee, has been a leader on this issue, and she is right in her approach, understanding that working with juveniles early will save money in the long run and see that they don't get into the prison pipeline that so often takes young people and ruins their lives and costs our communities and our taxpayers a great deal of money. Our Federal prisons are presently funded $7 billion for administration, operation, and maintenance. Twenty million dollars of that is made up for contract confinement. This amendment would reduce the account by $10 million and put it into juvenile justice programs that would reduce recidivism, gang violence, and gun crime. These juvenile justice programs that would get the benefit of this money would protect our most vulnerable children through treatment and mentoring programs. According to the Justice Policy Institute, locking up juveniles costs an average of $407 a day and $148,000 per person per year. There are a lot of conservative coalitions, like FreedomWorks, American Conservative Union Foundation, and Taxpayers Protection Alliance that agree that mass incarceration is extremely costly to taxpayers.…”