Sheila Jackson Lee: “I thank the gentleman. I look forward to working with all of my colleagues. As I finish, let me just say that today…”

“I thank the gentleman. I look forward to working with all of my colleagues. As I finish, let me just say that today, again, I will be introducing the recidivism--to End Infant Mortality and Reduce Recidivism bill dealing with incarcerated women. Many of those women are incarcerated because of drug addiction issues that involve the possession or sale of narcotics. What we are attempting to do, if a baby is born in prison, we are attempting to recognize that they should not be separated from that mother, and to have some postnatal nursery situation in a pilot program to examine how that works, because we know that addiction, in many instances, has caused women to be incarcerated. There are many issues that we can look at, and I hope, as we work our way through this, we will find some solutions for those who are still addicted to crack cocaine and need some of the same or similar services that this underlying legislation has. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 5046, the Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Reduction Act of 2016, of which I am an original cosponsor. I commend the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime, Jim Sensenbrenner, for his work on this bill and I also commend Chairman Goodlatte and Ranking Member Conyers for their ability to find common ground on this very important issue. I also note that I was a cosponsor of a similar bill that was the predecessor to this one, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act.…”