My Letter to Congress: H.R.3245 Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act of 2009 
Contact Congress
This letter was sent by OpenCongress user
jwillia5
on
January 07, 2012
in support of
H.R.3245 Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act of 2009.
Privacy setting:
PUBLIC
To:
-
Sen. Patrick Toomey [R, PA] Vote on Passage of H.R.3245: Not Voted Yet -
Rep. Robert Brady [D, PA-1] Vote on Passage of H.R.3245: Not Voted Yet -
Sen. Robert Casey [D, PA] Vote on Passage of H.R.3245: Not Voted Yet
H.R.3245 Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act of 2009
I am writing as your constituent in the 1st Congressional district of Pennsylvania. I support H.R.3245 - Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act of 2009, and am tracking it using OpenCongress.org, the free public resource website for government transparency and accountability.
Sincerely,
Jenette Williams
Sincerely,
Jenette Williams
This letter was a reply from the office of Sen. Patrick Toomey [R, PA] on January 07, 2012.
Thank you for your message
Dear Jenette,
Thank you for contacting my office. I appreciate your taking the time to share your thoughts about current issues. Please be assured that constituent correspondence will receive a reply in the near future.
Sincerely,
Pat Toomey
U.S. Senator, Pennsylvania
Thank you for contacting my office. I appreciate your taking the time to share your thoughts about current issues. Please be assured that constituent correspondence will receive a reply in the near future.
Sincerely,
Pat Toomey
U.S. Senator, Pennsylvania
This letter was a reply from the office of Sen. Robert Casey [D, PA] on January 23, 2012.
Response from Senator Casey
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Dear Mrs. Williams:
Thank you for taking the time to contact me about reforming our Nation?s criminal justice system. I appreciate hearing from you about this issue.
The United States has by far the world?s highest incarceration rate. With five percent of the world?s population, our country now houses twenty-five percent of the world?s reported prisoners. More than 2.38 million Americans are currently in prison, and another 5 million remain on probation or parole.
Our prison population has skyrocketed over the past two decades as we have incarcerated more people for non-violent crimes and acts driven by mental illness or drug dependence. The costs to our federal, state and local governments of keeping repeat offenders in the criminal justice system continue to grow during a time of increasingly tight budgets. Existing practices too often incarcerate people who do not belong in prison and distract from locking up the more serious, violent offenders who are a threat to our communities.
Mass incarceration of illegal drug users has not curtailed drug usage. The multi-billion dollar illegal drug industry remains intact, with more dangerous drugs continuing to reach our streets. Incarceration for drug crimes has had a disproportionate impact on minority communities, despite virtually identical levels of drug use across racial and ethnic lines. Post-incarceration re-entry programs are haphazard and often nonexistent, undermining public safety and making it extremely difficult for ex-offenders to become full, contributing members of society.
It is clear that we, as a Nation, must address these issues and develop steps to improve the effectiveness of the criminal justice system. On February 8, 2011, Senator Jim Webb introduced S. 306, the National Criminal Justice Commission Act, of which I am a cosponsor. This bill will create a national commission to conduct an 18-month top-to-bottom review of our criminal justice policies and propose concrete reforms designed to responsibly reduce the overall incarceration rate; improve federal and local responses to international and domestic gang violence; restructure our approach to drug criminalization; improve the treatment of mental illness; improve prison administration; and establish a system for reintegrating ex-offenders.
S. 306 is currently pending before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, of which I am not a member. Please be assured that should this legislation come before the Senate for consideration, I will have your views in mind. Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future about this or any other matter of importance to you.
If you have access to the Internet, I encourage you to visit my web site, http://casey.senate.gov. I invite you to use this online office as a comprehensive resource to stay up-to-date on my work in Washington, request assistance from my office or share with me your thoughts on the issues that matter most to you and to Pennsylvania.
Sincerely,
Bob Casey
United States Senator
Dear Mrs. Williams:
Thank you for taking the time to contact me about reforming our Nation?s criminal justice system. I appreciate hearing from you about this issue.
The United States has by far the world?s highest incarceration rate. With five percent of the world?s population, our country now houses twenty-five percent of the world?s reported prisoners. More than 2.38 million Americans are currently in prison, and another 5 million remain on probation or parole.
Our prison population has skyrocketed over the past two decades as we have incarcerated more people for non-violent crimes and acts driven by mental illness or drug dependence. The costs to our federal, state and local governments of keeping repeat offenders in the criminal justice system continue to grow during a time of increasingly tight budgets. Existing practices too often incarcerate people who do not belong in prison and distract from locking up the more serious, violent offenders who are a threat to our communities.
Mass incarceration of illegal drug users has not curtailed drug usage. The multi-billion dollar illegal drug industry remains intact, with more dangerous drugs continuing to reach our streets. Incarceration for drug crimes has had a disproportionate impact on minority communities, despite virtually identical levels of drug use across racial and ethnic lines. Post-incarceration re-entry programs are haphazard and often nonexistent, undermining public safety and making it extremely difficult for ex-offenders to become full, contributing members of society.
It is clear that we, as a Nation, must address these issues and develop steps to improve the effectiveness of the criminal justice system. On February 8, 2011, Senator Jim Webb introduced S. 306, the National Criminal Justice Commission Act, of which I am a cosponsor. This bill will create a national commission to conduct an 18-month top-to-bottom review of our criminal justice policies and propose concrete reforms designed to responsibly reduce the overall incarceration rate; improve federal and local responses to international and domestic gang violence; restructure our approach to drug criminalization; improve the treatment of mental illness; improve prison administration; and establish a system for reintegrating ex-offenders.
S. 306 is currently pending before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, of which I am not a member. Please be assured that should this legislation come before the Senate for consideration, I will have your views in mind. Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future about this or any other matter of importance to you.
If you have access to the Internet, I encourage you to visit my web site, http://casey.senate.gov. I invite you to use this online office as a comprehensive resource to stay up-to-date on my work in Washington, request assistance from my office or share with me your thoughts on the issues that matter most to you and to Pennsylvania.
Sincerely,
Bob Casey
United States Senator
Note to Congressional staff & elected officials reading this: this letter was sent through Contact-Congress features on OpenCongress.org, a free public resource website, but in the future we seek to compel the U.S. Congress to adopt fully open technology for constituent communications. For more information how your office can better handle public feedback through an open API and open standards, contact us -- even today, there are significantly more efficient and responsive ways for our elected officials to receive email feedback than the status quo of individual webforms. For greater public accountability in government, we must make the process of writing one's members of Congress more accessible and empowering. Looking ahead, we will release more data from Contact-Congress letters and Congressional response rates back into the public commons. This will result in a new open data source on bills & issues people care about, as well as encourage best practices in constituent communications and make it possible to grade members of Congress on their responsiveness & citizen satisfaction.
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