Gov. Bill Lee
Gov. Bill Lee has for months signaled that criminal justice reform would be a priority during his second year in office.
Now, with just weeks to go before the state legislature returns, Lee’s team offered a hint of what that reform might look like. At an event last month, the governor’s Criminal Justice Investment Task Force released the results of a months-long study of the status of criminal justice in Tennessee, including a number of recommendations that could form the basis of legislative proposals this year.
Lee, addressing the group, called it “just the beginning” of a longer process. Among the policy proposals is a complete ground-up rewrite of the state’s criminal code, but that is expected to take longer than just the few months the legislature will be in Nashville.
Brandon Gibson, Lee’s senior criminal justice adviser, did offer a preview of which changes are more imminent.
“The ones that we really need to look at are ones dealing with mental health and substance abuse services, so I think you’ll see real movement on those,” she said.
Gibson, a former judge, said the most upsetting finding in the Criminal Justice Investment Task Force’s report was the state’s high — and growing — rate of incarcerated women.
House Majority Leader William Lamberth, who is in part responsible for shepherding the governor’s bills through the legislature, said part of the conversation could include lengthening prison terms for repeat violent felons while doing a better job of helping those released from prison transition to the outside world.
“If you look at this report, there are some very obvious things that we can do better while someone is incarcerated to address whatever issues that led to their incarceration,” said Lamberth.
Criminal justice reform has been one of the few issues in recent years to attract bipartisan support. Democratic state Sen. Raumesh Akbari of Memphis, who attended the task force event, said the recommendations “create a framework for meaningful and desperately needed changes.”
One area in which the governor is not ready to make a move: expanding voting rights to inmates and certain released felons.
“Restoring voting rights is something that has been interesting to me, something that we’ll talk about,” Lee said in an interview with the Scene late last year. “It’s not something that we’re proposing right now. We have a lot of what I think is more substantive work around criminal justice reform, but we have a lot of years to work on this. That’ll be something that I will want to talk to people across the state to see if there’s an interest in that.”
On another criminal justice issue, Lee is expected to face a series of tough decisions in the new year. With the attorney general continuing to push for execution dates for Tennessee’s death row prisoners, more clemency petitions will land on the governor’s desk. Execution days are “the most difficult days” Lee faces as governor, he said, though he has so far declined to attend one.
“I spend weeks on every single one of those cases, and I do evaluate them independently, primarily to see if there is any opportunity for a breach of justice,” Lee said. “Most of these cases have been tried, and there’s been a verdict, and they’ve gone through multiple levels of appeals, so I’ll read some of those appeals and then make a decision. But what I’m looking for is the opportunity for a breach of justice.”
