Senate rejects Webb's prison reform plan

U.S. Sen. Jim Webb's proposal to form a commission to recommend widespread reforms to the criminal justice system lost a key vote Thursday in the Senate.

Webb has argued that changes are long overdue - the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, the bill notes, and half of prisoners will return to prison within three years of release. A disproportionately large share of minorities are behind bars.

"It is time for us to move forward to get the comprehensive advice of the best minds in America in terms of how to fix our broken criminal justice system," Webb said in a floor speech before the vote. He noted that more than 70 organizations, including law enforcement groups and civil liberty organizations, have endorsed the project.

The measure calls for creating a 14-member bipartisan commission with a $5 million budget to examine all levels of the justice system - federal, state and local. It is intended to lead to recommendations on how to change laws, enforcement practices and prison operations to make the justice system fairer and more cost-effective. The panel would have to complete its work in 18 months.

Two Republican senators, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, spoke against the amendment, saying that allowing a federal commission to examine state and local criminal justice systems would encroach on states' rights and that the commission's $5 million budget should be used for other purposes.

Hutchison said studying the federal system is within Congress' powers but including state and local justice systems "is an overreach of gigantic proportions."

"We are absolutely ignoring the Constitution if we do this," Coburn said.

A majority of senators supported Webb's amendment, 57-43, but it fell three votes short of the 60 needed to be added to a spending bill.

Webb blamed Republicans for blocking the legislation and vowed after the vote to keep pressing for the commission.

"Their inflammatory arguments defy reasonable explanation and were contradicted by the plain language of our legislation," Webb said in a prepared statement. "To suggest, for example, that the nonbinding recommendations of a bipartisan commission threaten the Constitution is absurd."

All the Senate Democrats, including Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, and four Republicans supported the bill.

The proposal remains active as a Webb-sponsored Senate bill that was sent in February to the Judiciary Committee. No action has been taken action on the measure.

Webb considers passage of the bill a priority before his term expires in January 2013. The measure passed the House during the last two-year congressional session but was never brought up for a vote in the full Senate before Congress adjourned in December 2010.

Bill Bartel, (757) 446-2398, bill.bartel@pilotonline.com