Bobby Scott: “The gentleman talked about spending the money. We are spending the money. Six hundred thousand people get out every…”

“The gentleman talked about spending the money. We are spending the money. Six hundred thousand people get out every year. Two-thirds of them come back. That is 400,000 going back. At just $20,000 a year, that is $8 billion we are spending because we don't reduce recidivism. It is actually probably more like $10 billion to $16 billion by the time you invest 20, 30, $40,000 a piece, but at a minimum $8 billion, if we spent a portion of that, if we could significantly reduce recidivism by turning lives around like the life you mentioned instead of having to pay for incarceration, we are now on the receiving end of the tax money that she is paying. Every program we have seen, and this is no different, of those reentry programs when you provide education, you reduce recidivism, save more money than you spend, drug treatment, transitional services, significantly reducing recidivism because of the expense of incarceration, 20, 30, $40,000 a year, you don't have to reduce recidivism very much to save the taxpayer some money. We are spending the money now and we ought to be spending it better. We ought to be smart on crime rather than rhetorical on crime. {time} 2310 If we were smarter on crime, we would spend some of this $8 billion that we are going to spend next year because we did not make the investments last year. We need to make the investments in these people to reduce recidivism and save money, and if we do that, it would save more money than we spend if we pass this bill.”