Last week Republican Arkansas Sen Tom Cotton said the U.S. wasn’t locking enough people up in its jails and prisons. This week the president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Council of Prison Locals (CPL), Eric Young, shot back that his 39,000 brethren beg to differ.
Speaking at the Hudson Institute, Cotton said:
"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."
According to Politico, Cotton’s spokesperson Caroline Rabbitt defended Cotton’s comments noting that more than half of violent crimes go unsolved. That would seem to be a local law enforcement issue but as of yet, no police groups have responded to the senator’s comments.
Young sent a letter to Cotton expressing his disappointment with the senator’s comments, noting that the federal Bureau of Prisons “remains terribly overcrowded and understaffed.” He also noted that a bill currently before the Senate sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley should be supported because “ … this is one of those areas where we must not allow the perfect to get in the way of the good – and this is a good bill.” Cotton has expressed concern that the bill, which would “ease mandatory minimums for some federal offenses,” could allow some violent offenders to be released early.
According to the Institute for Criminal Policy Research, the U.S. leads the planet in incarceration. So perhaps both Cotton and the federal prisons employee’s union should have a seat. Advocates of prison abolition have been organizing around this issue for years—perhaps it is time for their vision of safe and secure communities to see the light of day.