Cornyn Calls for Bipartisan Criminal Justice Reform

Like most Americans, I was very disturbed by the scenes that unfolded across our TV sets and not too far away from here in Baltimore during the last couple of weeks.

So the question arises: What can we do? What can we do about it?

We are doing a great disservice to ourselves and to everyone else so clearly frustrated by the status quo if we isolate Baltimore or Ferguson as just individual instances of civic unrest, and if we don't step back and see how they fit into the broader issue of our entire criminal justice system.

We can contribute to efforts to remedy the basic instability of those communities and particularly we can start to make real progress on a criminal justice system to make it lessen the burden on those communities who are struggling with these issues.

One example of how we are doing that is a piece of legislation I introduced in February with the junior Senator from Rhode Island, Senator Whitehouse, called the CORRECTIONS Act.

With about 30 percent of the Department of Justice's budget spent on detaining federal inmates and the cost of federal prison skyrocketing, this bill would actually take a number of constructive steps to reform our federal prison system and would also make better use of taxpayers' money.

But in order to make sure that the conversation about criminal justice reform extends to issues beyond prison reform and sentencing, there's another step that the junior Senator from Michigan and the senior Senator from South Carolina and I introduced just last week.

What we have introduced is something we call the National Criminal Justice Commission Act, which would create a commission to provide a top-down review of our entire criminal justice system.

The continuing dialogue and commission process will help us strengthen the relationship between law enforcement and communities and help us build on consensus items like the CORRECTIONS Act.

I think this is the kind of big idea, the big challenge which will resonate with the people we represent in our states and across the country. When they see us coming together on a bipartisan basis and actually trying to solve problems, I think they feel like we're finally listening to them and doing what we should be doing here in the United States Senate.

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