 I want to begin again by expressing my appreciation for the tremendous assistance that the ABA has provided us as we have advanced this issue of the need for criminal justice reform and in addition to the need for reform the specific legislation that we put forward and appreciate the article that was written earlier on this point by Bill Richardson and Janet Levine the chair of the criminal justice section and all the hard work that's been done by Steve Salzburg, Jack Hannah, Bruce Nicholson and many others and I would really be remiss in talking on this issue about criminal justice reform if I did not mention the incredible heavy lift that one particular member of my staff Doug Ireland has made on this. Doug Ireland are you in the back room? Please stand up. As those who have worked with us know I'm not on the judiciary committee. The legislation that we've been working on has been done completely out of our office and it's involved four and a half years of really hard work by our staff including meetings with representatives of more than a hundred different organizations across the country and when we introduced this legislation for a vote last week which we lost as Steve mentioned but we're not done. We had the support of 70 different organizations from across the philosophical spectrum and it's a real rarity when you're working in this area of criminal justice reform when you can put a piece of legislation up that has the endorsement of the National Sheriff's Association, the International Association of Chiefs of Police all the way across the spectrum to the ACOU, the sentencing project. This is something that is wide recognition in the country that needs to be addressed and we're going to continue to work on that. Also like again to mention I'm glad that my wife was able to be with us today. She's a Cornell lawyer which you know you're married to a Cornell lawyer and you're a Georgetown graduate. I have to say I think I don't think she got better education than I do but people light up when they hear Cornell so definitely went to a very good school and I'm sitting here in the shadow of Georgetown where the years that I was at Georgetown I don't know if there are any other people who graduated from Georgetown who are here today. I see a couple of hands, Richard Allen Gordon to Harry Hand and contracts all these great memories but I got to Georgetown Law School right after the Watergate break end in 1972 and I graduated right after the fall of South Vietnam in 1975 and if you were a Vietnam veteran that was not a fun time to be in Washington D.C. I would say I've told people I'd rather spend three more years in Vietnam than go through three years again at Georgetown Law School during that break. But I want to talk to you today about why I became so interested in this issue of criminal justice reform. What our journey has been since I announced for the Senate I've been working on off and on in the area of criminal law for a long time as a journalist, as a pro bono attorney at one point and what we did to prepare this legislation and what happened and what we're going to do because what happened last week was a total surprise when after four and a half years of work and as Steve mentioned bringing people in from all philosophical viewpoints, listening to them, working across the aisle, adapting the legislation just to be able to say for the first time since 1965 we are going to get a top to bottom look at the quite frankly broken criminal justice system in the United States. We're going to get the best advice from people who have spent their professional lives in this area. We're going to have them make recommendations to the Congress and we're going to sit down and we're going to think about it and we're going to try to adopt the types of measures that will allow the system to work again. That's that was our objective. It was not a political it was not political at its base it was it was a leadership based effort. One of the great things I learned from the Marine Corps was that you have to have accountability in a system but you a system cannot function without fairness you have to have both and when I decided to run for the Senate I decided this is one issue I was going to put in front of the people in Virginia that on the one hand we over-incarcerate there's just no there's no way around that. We have by some statistics five percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's prison population. We have on any given day seven million people involved in this process as many people in this room know full well. We have about 2.3 to 2.38 million people in physical incarceration in one place or another. We have another nearly five million under some sort of supervision as a result of the criminal justice system and at the same time if you take a poll on any given day in the United States two thirds of the people in this country feel less safe than it a year ago in their own communities. That's clear evidence that we've got a broken system we're doing something wrong. When I first started talking about this during my campaign in Virginia my political advisors were pulling me aside and saying you know this is suicide you know you don't talk about this in Virginia have you looked at the data have you looked at the political positions but everywhere I went when I would when I would talk about this from from you know the relatively secure neighborhoods in northern Virginia that's some of the harder neighborhoods and in the Tidewater area and the Norfolk area or Richmond people would start nodding people understood the average American understands the system is broken it's not always fair and it's not doing what it was supposed to do. So when I came to the Senate even though I was not assigned to the Judiciary Committee we just took this on. I was assigned on the Joint Economic Committee which is a non legislative committee and I was very lucky that at that time Chuck Schumer was the chairman and Chuck Schumer is a pretty innovative fellow as I think all of you know. I said Chuck I'd like to hold hearings on the economic consequences of mass incarceration about the economic consequences of the economic aspects of drugs policy and he said go to it. So we use the Joint Economic Committee to hold some some really important hearings that I think helped illuminate this issue and started a debate across the country about the fact that we need to we need to speak openly and we need to fix it. So I will say victory number one and it is a victory over the past five years of putting this issue up and causing people to talk about it is it's it's put the issue of criminal justice reform into the national debate where people from all sides of the political process can now openly talk about it without fear of losing their careers or without having to worry about somebody saying hey you just solved on crime and what we've got a heritage foundation talking about it. Newt Gingrich talking about it. We have endorsements as I mentioned on this legislation from our three major law enforcement associations which were a little skeptical at the beginning when when we put the legislation forward. I had firmly believed that if I applied the same leadership model on this legislation that I had used on legislation that we put together for the GI Bill for our post 9-11 military members that this would be a no brainer a no brainer when it came to a vote. The level of debate was really high the energy level was high and all we're talking about is getting 14 of the brightest minds and criminal justice in the country to come together and give us advice and you know the energy of the discussion was extremely high. What I did when we put the GI Bill into play and and by the way that was not an easy lift you know there there are things that when they turn out right look simple in retrospect when I introduced the GI Bill my first day in office having been a as as Steve mentioned having been a committee council in a house years ago working on veterans legislation every day. I basically my point was we keep saying this group of people are the next greatest generation we're giving them a GI Bill that isn't even 14% of what the greatest generation got if you were going to go to a good school when you left the military let's give them the same educational opportunity as the people came back in World War two pay their tuition buy their books give them a month give them a monthly stipend people were saying welcome to the Senate you've been here one week wait your turn you know everybody has some kind of a veterans bill they want to put forward and we said no we developed a leadership model reached across the aisle to the other side put this legislation forward with four principal sponsors two Republican two Democrat two World War two veterans two Vietnam veterans we had John Warner with us my former senior senator we had Chuck Hagel from Nebraska Vietnam veteran Republican got Frank Lautenberg from New Jersey World War two veteran myself Vietnam veteran 16 months we educated the Congress about why this was needed we forced a vote and went and after 16 months of effort focused on policy and not on politics we passed the most important piece of veterans legislation since World War two over the op they don't like to hear this over the opposition of the Bush administration we passed it I thought this is the way we need to get things done we need to get people together who want to govern we started the same process on this criminal justice reform bill but guess what John Warner's gone Chuck Hagel's gone as a lot that's changed in the United States Congress and in the the top leadership of our legislative bodies since the election of 2010 let's just be very frank about that our legislation criminal justice legislation was developed hand-on-glove also with the House of Representatives and it's important to remember when we see what happened with this Republican filibuster last week that in the last session of Congress before those who were elected in 2010 took their seats this bill this criminal justice reform bill passed the House of Representatives by a voice vote it was not even controversial enough to have to go under suspension of the rules to see if one-third of the House would object to it Lamar Smith who's the chairman now of the House Judiciary Committee was a co-sponsor of this exact legislation we are not done as you might imagine we are going to continue to pursue ways to get this Commission enacted and to get the advice and the debate that is needed in order to fix the broken points in our criminal justice system so that we can again have a criminal justice system that holds people accountable where they need to be held accountable that makes proper sense in terms of how people or try our tribe how long their sentencing happens to be and let me just add a parenthesis in that point because I know it's something that's been discussed today in your in your gatherings I was the first American journalist allowed to go inside the Japanese prison system 1983 I spent a month doing a piece on Americans in Japanese jails it was fascinating it was it was one of the inspirations that caused me to focus on even then on the broken points in our the emerging broken points beginning in about 1980 in our criminal justice system and in the Japanese system if you are given a sentence of three years or more you've really done something extremely unusual they focus on accountability rather than the length of incarceration something we need to discuss something we need to debate what should the standards be in terms of prison administration again the Japanese system was very much like the American military and what I what I mean by that is in order to be a turnkey in a prison in Japan when I was was going through their system you had to pass you had to compete in a nationally nationally standardized test you had to go through a year of training counseling not simply the physical part of it and you could not be a warden in a Japanese jail if you didn't start as a turnkey it was a promotional system that it emphasized quality at the beginning and measurement all the way through the system and I had an American who had been in Japanese prison and had been in American prison who I had interviewed before I went over there and one of the things he said was I shed more than one tear when I said goodbye to my guard and I asked one of the wardens in Japan about about his comment he said if we are their comrade we are their tutor and we are their guard so why don't we talk about you know there's good models and there's not so good models in the United States what's wrong with having that discussion and most importantly right now and I and I think that the focus here is in your conference today is so vital on this point is what are we going to do in order to provide smarter and better reentry programs for people after they have been incarcerated as everyone in this room knows when the magnitude of incarceration has increased give you one one little key data point that we talk about a lot when we're talking about criminal justice in the Senate 1980 there were 45,000 people in prison on drugs in the United States 45,000 we got about 500,000 in prison on drugs in the United States today basically nonviolent crime when you have such a large percentage of your population that has gone through the prison environment it is in the interest of every American that the reentry process be structured and as much as possible be fair in order to allow people who have been in this process those who want to resume positive career paths and contribute to our society to give them a structured opportunity in order to do that I think it's one of the great failings in our system and then finally what are we doing what are we going to do with the ever-growing issue of gangs in the United States and particularly transnational gangs so much of it driven by incidents that are coming up from our southern border the last number I saw was that there were at least 232 cities and towns in the United States where Mexican drug cartels have been operating at one level or another those of you who live in northern Virginia are I'm sure aware of the growing problems of gangs in northern Virginia last number I saw was there about 6,000 gang members in northern Virginia so we need a system where we need to revamp our system to where we can ensure accountability but also provide fairness and adaptive thought in terms of how we are handling the problems of society that's basically that's all we're trying to do that's all we've been trying to do for the last four and a half years in terms of putting this commission online and I again like to express my appreciation for your organization for the strong support and to give you my continued pledge that we're not giving up on this I think this is one of the most vital issues in terms of how our society works and we're gonna we're gonna keep at it as long as we have the potential of getting this done and I think we will get it done thank you very much it's been good