Project for Opportunity and Safety

Law enforcement fires back at Cotton over ‘under-incarceration’

Law enforcement officials are firing back at Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) for his comments last week that the United States has an “under-incarceration problem.”

Cotton, who’s become one of the most prominent opponents of a criminal justice overhaul in the Senate, argued during a speech last week that in fact, too few perpetrators are being found for the vast majority of crimes committed in the United States.

But those comments have ticked off a union that represents nearly 40,000 workers at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, who emphasized in a new letter to Cotton that the prison system “remains terribly overcrowded and understaffed.

“As the president of a council made up of frontline law enforcement employees, I found these comments to be incredibly disrespectful to the people who endanger their lives every day so our communities may know peace,” Eric Young, the president of the union, wrote to Cotton in a May 23 letter obtained by POLITICO.

Young wrote, for example, that high-security prisons have a 32 percent overcrowded rate, and medium-security facilities are 47 percent overcrowded. The union added: “Given these statistics, it’s hard for me to understand why you would think our country has a problem with ‘under-incarceration.’”

He also said: “I ask that before you make any further decisions or remarks you consider what impact they might have on the men and women who risk their lives in overcrowded, understaffed federal prisons.”

Cotton spokeswoman Caroline Rabbitt defended the senator’s comments, saying: “When over half of violent crimes go unsolved, there are many heinous murderers and other dangerous offenders walking the streets who should be in prison.”

“Ask the wife, son, or father of a murder victim whose assailant is never arrested whether there’s at least one more criminal who should be incarcerated,” Rabbitt said in an e-mail. “And ask the residents of cities struggling with drug overdoses and crime whether major drug traffickers should be released early from prison and back into the streets.”

Cotton has actively opposed the Senate criminal justice deal that would ease mandatory minimums for some federal offenses. He argues that the legislation could unwittingly release violent criminals prematurely. Though the measure has key heavyweight senators behind the bill, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has yet to say whether he will bring the measure to the floor.

Last week at the Hudson Institute, Cotton tried to rebut arguments that backers of the criminal justice bill often make. He dismissed the notion that there are too many offenders in prison for relatively minor crimes and that incarceration is too expensive.

“Law enforcement is able to arrest or identify a likely perpetrator for only 19 percent of property crimes and 47 percent of violent crimes,” Cotton said. “If anything, we have an under-incarceration problem.”