Finally, Something Washington Can Agree On

WASHINGTON -- Today more than 2 million Americans woke up behind bars. That's because the United States puts more people in prison than any other country.

Finding ways to reform the system is uniting Democrats and Republicans in Washington.

Some of the most influential senators on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, took part in a recent press conference on the issue.

"We come from different spots on the political spectrum," Durbin told reporters.

But instead of pointing fingers at each other, they're shaking hands over a proposal to reform America's criminal justice system.

"This is a bill we can be proud of," Grassley said.

The senators say their reforms will make America safer.

Former prosecutors, like Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who helped craft the bill, say too often in America the punishment doesn't fit the crime because the law has imposed unnecessarily harsh punishments on too many offenses, putting more people in prison than need to be there.

The senators' bill gives judges the ability to hand out sentences below the mandatory federal guidelines for non-violent drug offenders.

Inmates considered less likely to be repeat offenders can reduce their sentences 25 percent by taking part in rehabilitation programs.

Eligible inmates must undergo regular tests to determine their likelihood of re-offending. Those who get their sentences reduced would be released into some sort of community-based supervision.

The proposal also gets rid of "three strikes and you're out" law, which requires life sentences for some non-violent offenses.

Senators say special care was taken to ensure that violent "career" criminals stay locked up.

Members of the House are working on their own legislation, but the Senate version already has the support of President Barack Obama, who calls the proposed the changes an "historic step forward in addressing" systemic problems in America's criminal justice system.

"One in three American adults has a criminal record of some kind," Lance Lemmonds, with the Coalition for Public Safety, told CBN News.

That's about 80 million Americans.

Lemmonds helps lead a coalition of unlikely allies pushing for reform, bring groups like the NAACP and the Faith and Freedom Coalition together.

"The fact that not only these groups have come together, but the millions of individual Americans who these groups represent, you know, it's more than just a Washington, D.C., thing," Lemmonds said. "I think it is a grassroots -- moving up through the channels and now it's finally arrived in Washington."

During the past three decades, the number of incarcerated Americans has increased by 500 percent.

Incarceration is a significant budget line item too.

This year, taxpayers will spend $80 billion to keep people locked up, including a disproportionate number of minorities.

An estimated 2.7 million children live in homes in which at least one parent is behind bars.

"Is that really how we want our children to be raised? Is this cycle something that we want to continue or is there a way to break it?" Lemmonds asked. "And we think that the movement that we've seen is a way to break that cycle. I call it breaking the cycle of incarceration and incorporating a cycle of redemption instead."

Supporters of reform give credit to Christian groups like Prison Fellowship for sounding the alarm years ago on the need for rehabilitation.

"Committing crime is not moral, but neither is over punishing and we have to find the right balance between the morality of punishment and the immorality of over punishment," criminologist Fran Buntman said.

Despite broad support for making changes in the prison system, the legislative clock is ticking and the president says he'd like to have a bill on his desk before the end of the year.