WASHINGTON – Today, Senator Mike Lee attended a bipartisan meeting at the White House to discuss the need to modernize and reform our criminal justice system. President Obama invited Senator Lee and several members of Congress, from both parties, to join him and Vice President Biden for a conversation on how to address the challenges of over-criminalization, over-incarceration, and over-sentencing in America.
“After a generation of tough-on-crime policies helped make communities around the country safer, many of our federal criminal justice laws are now out of date, counterproductive, and unfair,” said Sen. Lee. “Given the immense financial and human cost of our broken status quo, I was pleased to join President Obama and my congressional colleagues today for a dialogue to find bipartisan solutions to these problems. ”
One of the solutions discussed during the meeting was the Smarter Sentencing Act, a bill that Senator Lee recently introduced in the Senate with Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), which would modernize our federal drug sentencing laws and provide immediate relief to an overburdened prison system.
The Smarter Sentencing Act is a common-sense reform that will give judges the flexibility and discretion they need to impose stiff sentences on the most serious drug lords and cartel bosses, while enabling nonviolent offenders to return more quickly to the families and communities that need them.
After the meeting Senator Lee said, “I’m hopeful that the Senate will take up this bipartisan piece of legislation sometime soon, and in the meantime I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues across the aisle to find sensible solutions to our nation’s most pressing problems.”
