Senator Mike Lee explains how "conservative approach to lawmaking" drives his advocacy for federal sentencing reforms
Pew's Public Safety Performance Project has this notable new Q&A with Mike Lee under the subheading "A U.S. senator and former assistant U.S. attorney discusses crime and punishment, and how his views on both have changed." I recommend the entire Q&A, and the final three Qs and As struck me as worth reprinting here:
Q: How has your conversion on criminal justice influenced your career?
A: When I got to the Senate, I remembered what that [Judge Paul Cassell in the Angelos case] had said, and I realized that I had become one of the people who could help fix this problem. So that’s what I decided to do. I knew it wouldn’t necessarily be easy, but I also knew it was important. So I started looking for allies, and that led me to team up with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) on our legislation. It’s easy to say you want to be tough on crime and go along with any and every attempt to increase penalties, including minimum mandatory penalties. But to be effective, a criminal justice system must be seen as legitimate. And for too long, our federal sentencing laws have required punishments that just don’t fit the crime.
Q: Have you encountered any interesting reactions to the change in your views?
A: Most of it is encouraging. Most people I talk to, regardless of where they are on the political spectrum, are glad that somebody is doing this. And they’re glad to see me involved. There are some who aren’t. There are some who get upset and pound their chest and say, “You need to take criminals and lock them up and you need to throw away the key. We’ve got to be harder on crime and harder on criminals rather than softer.” So yes, there are those who take that approach, and most of those people would probably describe themselves as conservatives. Regardless of whether you consider that a conservative approach or not, I don’t think it’s a particularly thoughtful one. I don’t think it’s a particularly helpful one. It does us no good to be harsh just for the sake of harshness. Harshness itself isn’t an end objective. We want to be smart in the way we punish crime. We want to be effective. Public safety is the end result we’re trying to achieve.
Q: Any final thoughts?
A: Some people ask me, “Why are you doing this even though you’re a Republican? And a conservative Republican at that?” And the answer is that I don’t view criminal justice reform as incompatible with being a conservative; in fact, I’m doing this because I’m a conservative. Conservatives purport to be conservative because, among other things, conservatives believe we should take great care when government intervenes to deprive someone of liberty or property. There’s no greater due process deprivation than when the government puts someone away, either wrongfully or for a longer period of time than is just. So for me, this is a natural outgrowth of my conservative approach to lawmaking.
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