[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3819-3821]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       SECOND CHANCE ACT OF 2007

  Mr. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent the Judiciary Committee be 
discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1593 and the Senate 
proceed to its immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The clerk 
will report the bill by title.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 1593) to reauthorize the grant program for 
     reentry of offenders into the community in the Omnibus Crime 
     Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, to improve reentry 
     planning and implementation, and for other purposes.

  There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I was pleased to join Senators Specter, 
Biden, and Brownback last year as an original cosponsor of S. 1060, the 
Recidivism Reduction and Second Chance Act, and to help to shepherd 
that legislation through the Senate Judiciary Committee. I am pleased 
that now our hard work will finally enable us to take up and pass the 
House version of the legislation, which represents significant work and 
compromise on the part of the bill's Senate sponsors as well as those 
in the House, in order to move this important bill one step closer to 
becoming law.
  Over the past several years that we have been working on this bill, I 
and others have had to make many painful compromises in order to ensure 
that this important bill could receive the support it needs to pass and 
become law. In spite of these sacrifices, the Second Chance Act is a 
good first step toward a new direction in criminal justice that focuses 
on making America safer by helping prisoners turn their lives around 
and become contributing members of society.
  In recent years, this Congress and the States have passed a myriad of 
new criminal laws creating more and longer sentences for more and more 
crimes. As a result, this country sends more and more people to prison 
every year. There are currently more than 2 million people in jail or 
prison, and there are more than 13 million people who spend some time 
in jail or prison each year. Most of these people will at some point 
return to our communities. What kind of experience inmates have in 
prison, how we prepare them to rejoin society, and how we integrate 
them into the broader community when they get out are issues that 
profoundly affect the communities in which we live.
  As a former prosecutor, I believe strongly in securing tough and 
appropriate prison sentences for people who break our laws. But it is 
also important that we do everything we can to ensure that when these 
people get out of prison, they enter our communities as productive 
members of society, so we can start to reverse the dangerous cycles of 
recidivism and violence. I hope that the Second Chance Act will help us 
begin to break that cycle.
  The Second Chance Act would fund collaborations between State and 
local corrections agencies, nonprofits, educational institutions, 
service providers, and families to ensure that offenders released into 
society have the resources and support they need to become contributing 
members of the community. The bill would require that the programs 
supported by these grants demonstrate measurable positive results, 
including a reduction in recidivism. We should be supporting good 
programs and demanding results for our federal tax dollars.
  The bill would also set up a task force to determine ways to improve 
the effectiveness and efficiency of federal programs related to 
prisoner reentry and would authorize additional programs that would 
encourage employment of released prisoners, improve substance abuse 
treatment programs for prisoners, and assist the children of prisoners.
  I thank Senator Biden, Senator Specter, and Senator Brownback for 
consistently working with me to make a good bill even better. They 
accepted my suggestion to fix a provision that would have made it 
difficult for States without large urban areas to obtain grants. They 
also agreed with me that it made sense for victim services agencies to 
have a role in administering grants, for victims' needs to be 
specifically addressed by grants authorized by the bill, and for 
safeguards to be added to provisions aiming to integrate families of 
offenders in order to ensure that children are protected.
  They also worked with me to include in the Senate's legislation an 
important study of the collateral consequences of criminal convictions 
federally and in the States, which would encourage appropriate policy 
to help successfully reintegrate released offenders into society. I am 
disappointed that partisan and unprincipled objections prevented this 
study, which is very important but in no way provocative, from being a 
part of the final bill. I am glad to report, though, that this 
important study was passed into law in December as part of the Court 
Security Improvement Act of 2007. I am similarly glad that we are 
moving now to pass the best version of the Second Chance Act that we 
can.
  I thank the Vermont Department of Corrections and the Vermont Center 
for Crime Victim Services for helping me to identify important 
improvements and to make this bill better for the people of Vermont and 
the people of America. The Vermont Department of Corrections and many 
others in Vermont strongly support the Second Chance Act, which gives 
me confidence that this legislation we pass today represents an 
important step in making our country safer.
  Mr. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time 
and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no 
intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the 
Record.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The bill (H.R. 1593) was ordered to be read a third time, was read 
the third time, and passed.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise today to thank my colleagues for 
passing by unanimous consent the Recidivism Reduction and Second Chance 
Act of 2007, which I introduced in March of last year. I am delighted 
that my colleagues, Senators Specter, Brownback, and Leahy, and I were 
able to bring Democrats and Republicans together to support this very 
important piece of legislation.
  The bill aims to reduce the rate of recidivism by improving the 
transition of offenders from prison back into the community. Preventing 
recidivism is not only the right thing to do, it makes our communities 
safer and it saves us money.
  Today, we have over 2 million individuals in our Federal and State 
prisons and millions more in local jails. Our Federal and State prisons 
will release nearly 650,000 of these offenders back into our 
communities this year. A staggering two-thirds of released State 
prisoners will be rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 
3 years of release.

[[Page 3820]]

  It is not difficult to see why. These ex-offenders face a number of 
difficult challenges upon release. The unemployment rate among former 
inmates is as high as 60 percent; 15 to 27 percent of prisoners expect 
to go to homeless shelters upon release; and 57 percent of Federal and 
70 percent of State inmates used drugs regularly before prison. This 
addiction and dependency often continues during incarceration.
  Unless we address these problems, these individuals will commit 
hundreds of thousands of serious crimes after their release, and our 
communities will bear the human and economic cost. If we are going to 
reduce recidivism and crime, we simply have to make concerted, common-
sense efforts now to help ex-offenders successfully reenter and 
reintegrate into their communities.
  The Recidivism Reduction and Second Chance Act of 2007 confronts 
head-on the dire situation of prisoners reentering our communities with 
insufficient monitoring, little or no job skills, inadequate drug 
treatment, insufficient housing, lack of basic physical and mental 
health services, and deficient basic life skills. Through commonsense 
and cost-effective measures, the bill offers a second chance for ex-
offenders, and the children and families that depend on them, and it 
strengthens our communities and ensures safe neighborhoods.
  The Second Chance Act provides grants for the development and 
implementation of comprehensive substance abuse treatment programs, 
academic and vocational education programs, housing and job counseling 
programs, and mentoring for offenders who are approaching release and 
who have been released. To ensure accountability, the bill requires 
grantees to establish performance goals and benchmarks and report the 
results to Congress.
  The bill authorizes $324 million over 2 years in competitive grant 
funding. These funds represent an investment in our future and an 
acknowledgement of the problem we face. We must remember that the 
average cost of incarcerating each prisoner exceeds $20,000 per year, 
with expenditures on corrections alone having increased from $9 billion 
in 1982 to $60 billion in 2002. That is more than a 6-fold increase, 
and the costs keep going up.
  A relatively modest investment in offender reentry efforts today is 
far more cost-effective than the alternative--building more prisons for 
these ex-offenders to return to if they can't reenter their communities 
and are convicted of further crimes. An ounce of prevention, as the 
saying goes, is worth a pound of cure.
  I am proud today to witness the passage of the Recidivism Reduction 
and Second Chance Act, a bill that will transform offender reentry 
policy in this country. The safety of our neighbors, our children, and 
our communities depends on it. I urge the President to quickly sign 
this bill into law.
  I would particularly like to thank Nancy Libin on my staff, Lisa 
Owings on Senator Specter's staff, LaRochelle Young on Senator 
Brownback's staff, and Noah Bookbinder on Senator Leahy's staff, all of 
whom worked tirelessly to get this bill passed.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, Today, I rise to congratulate my 
colleagues on the passage of the Second Chance Act, a bill that we have 
been working on for over 4 years. I am pleased to join with Senators 
Biden and Specter and Chairman Leahy in supporting the passage of this 
bill. I, like my colleagues, have worked long and hard on this 
bipartisan legislation that is supported by over 200 bicameral and 
bipartisan organizations.
  I truly believe that with this bill, we have an incredible 
opportunity to reshape the way in which our Nation fights crime, 
addresses poverty, and provides for safer communities. Indeed, we have 
all seen the statistic. Over 650,000 individuals will be released from 
our Federal and State prisons, and 9 million are released from jails. 
Approximately two out of every three individuals released from prison 
or jail commit more crimes and will be rearrested within 3 years of 
release, placing increasing financial burdens on our States and 
decreasing public safety.
  This is unacceptable and must be addressed. Recidivism is costly, in 
both personal and financial terms. Consider: the American taxpayers 
spent approximately $9 billion per year on corrections in 1982, and in 
2002--nearly two decades later--taxpayers spent $60 billion.
  In addition to the astronomical costs of recidivism, the Nation's 
prison population is projected to continue to grow over the next 5 
years by an additional 13 percent. According to ``Public Safety, Public 
Spending: Forecasting America's Prison Population 2007--2017'', State 
and Federal prison populations are expected to add approximately 
192,000 persons at a cost of $27.5 billion between 2007 and 2011.
  If that is not astonishing enough, State spending on corrections has 
risen faster over 20 years than spending on nearly any other State 
budget item--increasing from $9 billion to $41 billion a year. The 
average annual operating cost per State inmate in 2001 was $22,650, or 
$62.05 per day. Among facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of 
Prisons, it was $22,632 per inmate, or $62.01 per day. These figures do 
not include the cost of arrest and prosecution, nor do they take into 
account the cost to victims.
  Despite that fact that taxpayers went from spending $9 billion per 
year on corrections in 1982 to $60 billion two decades later, the 
failure rate of our prison system has not improved over the last 30 
years.
  However, my concerns with our correctional system do not stop here. 
Not only do we need to ensure that our communities are safer, that the 
money spent on corrections result in drastically lower recidivism 
rates, but we must also look at the cost to the children of 
incarcerated individuals. A recent study found that children of 
prisoners are five times as likely to be incarcerated later in life as 
a child who has not had a parent incarcerated. Fifty-five percent of 
prisoners have children under the age of 18 and, tragically, more than 
7 million children can claim a parent in prison, in jail, under parole, 
or under probation supervision.
  Additionally, some incarcerated parents owe more than $20,000 in 
child support debt upon their release. Parents play a vital role in the 
lives of their children--and the role of incarcerated parents is no 
different. The children of individuals in our prison system often 
depend upon their incarcerated parent, at least in part, for financial 
support, and look to that parent for guidance in many aspects of their 
lives. Failing to address this very important facet of the family 
structure within the prison population could be contributing to the 
deterioration of families.
  We must stop subsidizing programs that do not work and that lead, in 
turn, to negative behavior less safety, more crime, and more money 
wasted.
  The Second Chance Act of 2007, co-authored by Senator Biden, Ranking 
Member Specter, Chairman Leahy, and myself, as well as our counterparts 
in the House of Representatives, is a bill that will address this issue 
by providing grant money to States through the Department of Justice 
and the Department of Labor to encourage the creation of innovative 
programs geared toward improving public safety, decreasing the 
financial burden on States and successfully reintegrating exoffenders 
into society.
  Additionally, this bill authorizes two grant programs designed to aid 
nonprofit organizations--faith-based and community based 
organizations--that provide programs to those incarcerated. As you may 
know, faith-based programs are very successful in reintegrating 
offenders into society. A 2002 study found that faith-based prison 
programs result in a significantly lower rate of re-arrest than 
vocation-based programs--16 percent versus 36 percent.
  A 2003 study on Prison Fellowship Ministries' Texas InnerChange 
Freedom Initiative, IFI, program found that IFI graduates were 50 
percent less likely to be re-arrested. The 2-year postrelease re-arrest 
rate among IFI postrelease graduates in Texas was 17 percent compared 
with 35 percent of the matched comparison group. And finally, the study 
found that IFI graduates were 60 percent less likely to be

[[Page 3821]]

reincarcerated and the 2-year postrelease reincarceration rate was 8 
percent of IFI graduates--8 percent--versus 20.3 percent with the 
matched comparison group from a nonfaith-based program.
  The bill also focuses on systematic changes within the criminal 
justice system by encouraging more coordination between Government 
agencies, encourages States, and local governments to reevaluate their 
current statutes in order to streamline their budgets and provide for 
more effective transition programs for inmates, which include: 
education, job training, life and family skills, programs for children 
of incarcerated parents, as well as substance abuse treatment.
  Further, I want my colleagues to know that there are real 
accountability measures within this bill. If grantees do not show 
significant progress in reducing the recidivism rates for program 
participants they will not be eligible to receive further funding under 
this act.
  States have already shown that recidivism rates can be dramatically 
cut with innovative programs, and I am proud that my State, Kansas, is 
a leader in this regard. In Kansas, the Shawnee County Re-Entry Program 
engages corrections officials and community partners to develop 
comprehensive reentry plans for people in prison who have been assessed 
as high-risk for reoffending upon release. In the 12 months prior to 
release, program participants work closely with case managers to 
develop their reentry plans. Case managers continue to provide support 
as needed following release.
  The Shawnee community is closely involved in the program as well, 
serving on accountability panels and as volunteer community connectors. 
The program also developed a data collection system to enable facility 
and parole case managers to enter information more easily. The system 
allows facility staff and case workers to share data with other data 
systems within other State agencies, and faith and community-based 
providers. A Web-based data system would also help build the capacity 
of community and faith-based organizations to track data similar to 
State data collections methods. In this way, State agencies can more 
easily compare data and outcomes with information collected by faith 
and community groups. This is just one example of innovation in 
addressing the concerns facing our criminal justice system.
  Indeed this bill is much needed and will serve as a catalyst for 
systemic change. This bill could not have happened without the hard 
work and determination of over 200 organizations, such as Prison 
Fellowship Ministries, Open Society, the Council of State Governments, 
and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, as well as many State and 
local government correction officials and law enforcement officials--a 
truly bipartisan/bicameral coalition of partners committed to changing 
the criminal justice system.
  Mr. President, I thank my colleagues, Senators Biden and Specter, and 
Chairman Leahy. Together we were able to implement vital legislation 
geared to improve public safety, give aid to States, and to truly give 
those incarcerated a second chance not only to fully integrate into 
society in a positive way but to provide them with a hope for a 
positive future not only for themselves but for their families as well.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I yield the floor to my colleague from 
Oklahoma, Senator Coburn.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized.

                          ____________________