Rand Paul: ‘Biggest impediment to employment and to voting in our country is a criminal record’

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said Wednesday the biggest impediment to employment and voting in the country is a criminal record, and said that while there is a “groundswell” gathering in favor of criminal justice reforms, nothing happens easily in Washington, D.C.

“I think the biggest impediment to employment and to voting in our country is a criminal record,” Mr. Paul said at the Bipartisan Summit on Fair Justice, co-hosted by the Coalition for Public Safety and #cut50. “And until we address that, I don’t think we’re serious about either voting rights or getting people back to work and minimizing how many people have to be on assistance.”

Mr. Paul, a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, said there are some good solutions to the problem of “over-criminalization,” pointing to California’s Proposition 47, which reclassified certain nonviolent felonies as misdemeanors.

“What this is does is it fixes the problem before it occurs,” he said. “You don’t lose your right to vote if it’s a misdemeanor and you don’t lose your opportunity for employment if it’s a misdemeanor.”

Mr. Paul also said a side effect was that there ended up being plenty of jail room for violent prisoners.

He said there is legislation in Washington that would do that, as well as legislation that would restore offenders’ federal voting rights.

Mr. Paul said he had a bill with Sen. Cory Booker, New Jersey Democrat, that would try to expunge records and end solitary confinement for young offenders — an idea Mr. Paul said was actually brought to his attention by Mr. Booker.

As he has in the past, Mr. Paul relayed the story of Kalief Browder, a New York man who was arrested at the age of 16 and later spent three years on Rikers Island without ever being formally convicted of a crime. He ended up committing suicide earlier this year.

“The sixth amendment says a speedy trial. We need to make sure everybody in our country has their day in court, gets a lawyer, and gets a trial,” Mr. Paul said. “This is something so fundamental that it should be all parties involved.”

Mr. Paul, who has been a leading Republican voice on the subject, actually won some praise from President Obama recently on the issue of mandatory minimum sentences.

“I am very appreciative of folks like Dick Durbin and Cory Booker, alongside Mike Lee and Rand Paul and other folks in the House who are working together to see if we can both reduce some of these mandatory minimums around nonviolent drug offenses,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference last week.

Mr. Paul said he thinks the best chance of getting something out of committee in the Senate would be legislation that would reform the federal civil asset forfeiture process and require body cameras for police officers.

He said on civil asset forfeiture, they shouldn’t accept anything that allows for property to be taken without a guilty conviction.

“This is just the beginning,” Mr. Paul said. “There is a groundswell. It is right and left. It is Republican and Democrat. But nothing happens easy in this town. So what I would say is keep on pushing, I’m there to help, and we’re going to see what we can do.”