Regarding the letters I sent to my various Congress people concerning civil asset forfeiture, I just received a reply from Senator Smith, a delay of maybe a month and a half. Unfortunately, it’s a form letter. Here’s the meatiest paragraph:
To make a more equitable and cost-effective system, we need to move away from a one-size-fits-all approach to justice and confront sentencing disparities, prison overcrowding, and bias in our criminal justice system. Mandatory minimums — which require fixed sentences for specific criminal convictions — have been used too widely and led to mass incarceration, which disproportionately impacts people of color and costs taxpayers billions of dollars. That’s why I am a cosponsor of the Smarter Sentencing Act, a bipartisan bill that would reduce mandatory minimums for some non-violent drug offenses and allow people sentenced under previous, harsher laws the chance to have their sentences revisited. I also support the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, another bipartisan bill that would give judges greater discretion in sentencing, make some of the drug sentencing reforms enacted in recent years retroactive, and support anti-recidivism initiatives. I am also a cosponsor of the End Racial and Religious Profiling Act of 2017 (ERRPA), which would prohibit racial profiling by law enforcement and require trainings and updated procedures to eliminate this practice.
That has little to do with civil asset forfeiture. While I appreciate that she’s active in this area, I’d place far more value on knowing her opinion on the topic I selected, rather than her activities in other, if related, areas.
In fact, it’s more campaign literature than an honest reply.
Which probably won’t stop me from voting for her – or at least not voting at all. But it’s disappointing that she, or her staff, failed to address an important question in today’s justice system, a question which, answered improperly, damages the faith that citizens have in their system being a just system.
