Congress Spent Police Week Working on Dangerous Policing Legislation
Our justice system needs reform. This isn’t the way to do it.

On a Thursday morning in October 2015, a bipartisan group of senators — five Democrats, four Republicans — held a press conference to unveil meaningful and long overdue sentencing and prison reform. The bill they introduced that day advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee just three weeks later, but — thanks to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — it languished for more than a year on the Senate floor before dying at the end of the 114th Congress.
Despite such broad bipartisan consensus on this issue over the past couple of years, the direction of federal criminal justice reform is now sliding dangerously in the wrong direction. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who as a senator last year helped derail the bipartisan reform efforts, has already reversed the Obama administration’s private prison phase-out, has indicated he’ll abandon the use of consent decrees, and has said goodbye to the Department of Justice’s Smart on Crime Initiative — in addition to taking cruel actions on issues like voting rights and LGBTQ equality. And he’s been Attorney General for just over 100 days.
Congress isn’t helping. While there have been positive developments — the Fair Chance Act was unanimously approved by a Senate committee last week, for example — there have also been alarming pieces of legislation making their way through the legislative process recently. Lawmakers chose this month’s Police Week, May 15–19, to work on several, particularly dangerous bills.
- The House of Representatives passed the unnecessary and dangerous Probation Officer Protection Act (H.R. 1039), which would broadly authorize federal probation officers to make warrantless arrests of people who are interfering with their work. Given the racial disparities that exist at every level of our nation’s criminal justice system, H.R. 1039 would likely have a disproportionate impact on people of color and perpetuate their mass incarceration. Instead of inhibiting successful reentry and implicating serious constitutional concerns by passing this bill, there are alternatives that should be explored (as outlined in our letter to Congress).
- The House also passed the Thin Blue Line Act (H.R. 115), which claims to protect police officers from being killed in the line of duty — but doesn’t actually ensure officer safety or prevent officer deaths. The bill threatens to make the death penalty more common, with complete disregard for the persistent injustices and racial inequality embedded in the death penalty system in America. As we wrote to representatives, H.R. 115 “is an unnecessary and misguided attempt to politicize the unfortunate deaths of law enforcement officers and could ultimately exacerbate existing tension between law enforcement and the communities they serve, especially African Americans.”
- Another bill, the Back the Blue Act, was introduced by Sen. John Cornyn, R. Texas, and Rep. Ted Poe, R. Texas. That legislation, according to Cornyn and Poe, “would increase the penalties for criminals who intentionally target law enforcement officers, and provide new tools for officers to protect themselves.” But rather than reflecting thoughtful and effective legislation to protect police and civilians alike, the Back the Blue Act would actually create duplicative and unnecessary crimes, and new mandatory minimum sentences, which would increase overcrowding in prisons, exacerbate existing racial and ethnic disparities in the federal prison system, cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, and rely on a dubious assertion of congressional authority. It’s divisive and would further diminish trust between communities of color and law enforcement.
Lawmakers probably aren’t done, either. Legislation like the Blue Lives Matter Act, introduced in April 2016 by Rep. Ken Buck, R. Colo., could be reintroduced to make law enforcement a protected class for hate crimes and/or enhanced penalties for violence against police. A law like that would pervert the original intent behind hate crime legislation — legislation that is near and dear to the civil rights community.
In the meantime, lawmakers need to hear from you (call 1–888–623–4558) about why Congress should be focusing on meaningful sentencing, policing, prison, and reentry reforms, not on dangerous and divisive measures like the ones described above. Tell your senators to oppose the Probation Officer Protection Act and the Thin Blue Line Act. Tell your senators and representative to oppose the Back the Blue Act. And if it’s introduced, urge them to oppose the Blue Lives Matter Act, too.
Taken together, these bills and recent actions by the Department of Justice represent a harmful and unacceptable assault on our nation’s progress. Yes, our justice system is in dire need of reform — but this isn’t the way to help fix it.
Earlier this year, our civil and human rights coalition of more than 200 national organizations released an open “Statement on Achieving Equal Justice and Opportunity,” which included a section on reforming our justice system. Read it below and — if you agree — tell your members of Congress that this is the future you believe in, too.
Our country’s criminal justice system must be reformed to ensure it operates in a just, equitable, and fair manner. We support the demilitarization of law enforcement and police reforms that protect civilians and improve accountability and transparency. We support criminal justice reform that addresses the use of entrapment tactics, informants, and racial and religious profiling. We support conditioning federal funding on the collection of hate crime data, data on the use of lethal and non-lethal force and other police-civilian encounters, and mandatory training on implicit bias and de-escalation, including proper interactions with persons with disabilities and mental illness. We support sentencing reform legislation that addresses the drivers of mass incarceration, racial disparities in incarceration, overcrowding in the federal Bureau of Prisons, and provides for alternatives to incarceration to reduce spending. We support the removal of barriers to the successful reintegration of formerly incarcerated individuals back into society through access to employment opportunities, voting, education, and public benefits.




