United State Senator Tom Cotton thinks he knows how to fix America’s problems. What is the solution that Senator Cotton has come up with? Senator Tom Cotton believes a large part of the country’s problems is that the United States simply isn’t putting enough people in jail.
The Republican politician from Arkansas gave a speech on Thursday afternoon where he based some of his colleagues’ efforts to reform the criminal justice system in America. During that speech, Senator Tom Cotton said he believes the U.S. suffers from an “under-incarceration problem.”
Tom Cotton has been a rather vocal opponent of a bill that is wending its way through Congress, which would get rid or severely limit mandatory minimums. During his speech, Senator Tom Cotton said he doesn’t buy into the idea that America has too many offenders locked away for relatively small crimes. Cotton also doesn’t believe incarceration is “too costly” or, according to Politico , that “ we should show more empathy toward those caught up in the criminal-justice system.” To back up his claims, Cotton pointed to a “vast majority” of crimes in which no one is apprehended.
“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.”
The Arkansas politician said in his speech. The army war veteran, who fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan, saw first hand what can happen when a society starts letting out dangerous offenders far too early. He added he believes if the U.S. continues to go this direction, the country will find itself looking at 1980’s era crime rates.
“The truth is you cannot decrease the severity and certainty of sentences without increasing crime, it’s simply impossible.”
Senator Tom Cotton’s assault on reducing the prison population continued as he claimed the U.S. is already substantially reducing its prison population. Cotton says that as of Thursday, there were about 195.000 federal prison inmates. That number is a steep decrease from the 214,000 federal inmates recorded just two years ago. The junior member from Arkansas did not point out how the numbers dropped or whether or not the crime rate in the United States was even remotely tied to the lower incarceration rates.
The Huffington Post pointed out that even if Cotton’s numbers are correct, there is still a massive number of people behind bars in America. Despite Tom Cotton’s claims that the U.S. is letting far too many people out of jail, new figures show the United States has the largest prison population in the world and the second highest incarceration rate . 2014 numbers also showed that 18 states all over the country were facing severe problems when it came to finding space for all the inmates their prisons were required to house. Illinois and Nebraska were two of the top states with overpopulation problems. Illinois had over 20,000 more inmates it needed to find a place for than it had space.
Senator Cotton is not just against letting people out of prison. Cotton has also talked about being against such reforms as restoring rights for felons once they are let out of jail. Cotton is against other reforms such as “Ban the Box.” That movement would have employers remove the checkbox on job applications which ask people whether or not they have a criminal record. While Cotton has not been fighting the prison reforms bills all on his own, he’s certainly been the loudest voice against the legislation. Supporters of the bill believe Senator Tom Cotton doesn’t have his facts straight and have said on numerous occasions that the idea violent criminals are just going to go automatically free is 100 percent wrong.
[Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images]
