Justice For All - Feb 2015

Currently there are 73 federal agencies that have full-time armed officers with arresting authority. According to a 2008 report by the Department of Justice, there were 120,000 full-time law enforcement officers working for federal agencies and 24 different federal agencies employed at least 250 full-time officers. Federal agencies with at least 250 full-time officers included the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Mint, U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Veterans Health Administration.

The American justice system is collapsing under its own weight. Big government policies passed by Congress have led to a justice system that traps nonviolent offenders in an endless cycle. This deprives them of economic opportunities and costs taxpayers billions of dollars each year. The Internal Revenue Service and law enforcement agencies at all levels of government have run roughshod over private property rights and due process through abuse of civil asset forfeiture.

Civil asset forfeiture laws allow the government to seize private property, even when citizens’ haven't been charged with a crime. These laws are a glaring violation of our 5th Amendment right to property and due process. In these cases, law enforcement must only provide probable cause in order to seize property, which, in practice, includes even the most dubious pieces of evidence.

There was an extraordinary sight on the Senate floor early Tuesday evening as five members of the chamber, led by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), engaged in a nearly 40-minute conversation about S. 502, the Smarter Sentencing Act, a bill that would reform mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent offenders.

Last Friday Senator Rand Paul spoke at Bowie State University about the need to reform our justice system. He spoke of the need to reform a system where 2 million American children have fathers in prison, leading to a breakdown of the American family. He spoke of the need to reform a system that too often prevents individuals from gaining employment after their release from prison and instead turns them over to the welfare state. Most importantly, he spoke of real proposals to implement the necessary changes, not vague hopes or dreams.

The momentum for fiscally conservative justice reforms continues to build. On Wednesday, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry expressed support for these efforts, pointing to the accomplishments of groundbreaking reforms in Texas that have been replicated in other Republican-leaning states.

As one of our more than 6.9 million FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your senators today and ask them to support the Record Expungement Designed to Enhance Employment (REDEEM) Act, introduced by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), “to provide for the sealing or expungement of records relating to Federal nonviolent criminal offenses, and for other purposes,” and to co-sponsor the bill if they have not already done so.

The average American commits three felony crimes a day, and, more often than not, doesn't even know they've run afoul of criminal statutes. In 2009, Harvey Silverglate published a book, Three Felonies A Day, that highlighted the absurdity of over-criminalization made possible by an endless string of federal laws.

Seeing the growing backlash toward abuses of civil asset forfeiture laws by law enforcement agencies across the country, Wyoming lawmakers recently passed legislation that would enact strong protections for innocent people who may have their property wrongly taken by overzealous police officers.