President Trump Announces His Support for Criminal Justice Reform Legislation

I certainly join in the effort to try to reform what we can of our criminal justice system.

The smart way to deal with this is recognizing the reality that people need to be prepared, if they are willing to accept the help, for a life in the community that doesn’t involve criminal activity.

The challenge, as you know, has been trying to marry the sentencing reform bill that Senator Lee and Senator Durbin and Senator Leahy have championed because those provisions are more controversial. I think we’re making progress because some of the retroactivity provisions were now left by the wayside here. We know the prison reform component works.

So you have my continued commitment to work with you and work with all of our colleagues to try to get us to a place where we can have a bill to present to the President.

I would just note the obvious, and that is the short period of time we have during the lame duck session.

I do think that there are people who, in good faith, have some differences of opinion on this topic, and they deserve to be heard as well. But I just wanted to reiterate my thanks to you and to everybody who’s contributed to this effort and to pledge to you my continued support for moving us to fruition here.

Senator Cornyn is the lead sponsor of the FIRST STEP Act, bipartisan prison reform legislation that overwhelming passed the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this year by a vote of 360 to 59.