GOP Senator: US Suffers From ‘Under-Incarceration Problem’

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said that the United States suffers from an “under-incarceration” problem in a Thursday speech rejecting a bipartisan criminal justice bill.

“Take a look at the facts,” Cotton told an audience at the conservative Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., according to Politico. “First, the claim that too many criminals are being jailed, that there is over-incarceration, ignores an unfortunate fact: for the vast majority of crimes, a perpetrator is never identified or arrested, let alone prosecuted, convicted, and jailed. Law enforcement is able to arrest or identify a likely perpetrator for only 19 percent of property crimes and 47 percent of violent crimes. If anything, we have an under-incarceration problem.”

Cotton has spearheaded the effort to derail a bipartisan bill aimed at easing federal sentencing guidelines for non-violent offenders and allowing incarcerated offenders, many of whom were imprisoned on drug charges, to petition for reduced sentences. The bill was crafted by two Republican senators, John Cornyn of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, and one Democratic senator, Dick Durbin of Illinois.

Cotton on Thursday referred to the legislation as a “criminal-leniency bill” and cautioned that reduced sentences would “allow for the release of violent felons from prison.”

As a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Cotton warned of the effect of releasing former inmates back into their communities.

“I saw this in Baghdad. We’ve seen it again in Afghanistan,” Cotton said in a question-and-answer session after his speech, according to Politico. “Security has to come first, whether you’re in a war zone or whether you’re in the United States of America.”

The Arkansas senator said he would support efforts to improve security within prisons and “promote rehabilitation,” but expressed skepticism for “Ban the Box” efforts and restoring former felons’ voting rights, according to Politico.

The United States held some 1,561,500 prisoners in state and federal correctional facilities at the end of 2014, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. As the American Civil Liberties Union notes, the U.S. has the highest number of people in jail of any country in the world.