NewsChannel 5 broadcast a story on Friday that could almost be described as a press release for Gov. Bill Lee — only it's worse than that. They've taken the governor's self-serving framing of the criminal justice "reforms" he recently signed into law and applied a lacquer of credibility — laundering, in other words, his public relations work on a topic where his rhetoric and his actions don't line up much at all. It's a coup for the governor's flacks, but not a great look for a news outlet.
Lee doesn't give a lot of one-on-one interviews, but it appears he granted an "exclusive" sit-down to NewsChannel 5's Kyle Horan to discuss "something the governor has been passionate about for a long time." Horan frames the passage of two criminal-justice-related bills this legislative session as part of a noble path Lee started down more than 20 years ago when he was a part of Men of Valor, a faith-based organization that works with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. Lee's work with the group has been endlessly cited as a sign of his personal connection to the work of criminal justice reform. The NewsChannel 5 story highlights the Re-Entry Success Act, which — among other things — creates a mandatory supervision program for recently incarcerated people aimed at reducing recidivism and seeks to encourage businesses to hire formerly incarcerated people. The story also references the Alternatives to Incarceration Act, which enables local governments to pursue community-based alternatives to prison time for lower-level offenses.
"The problems are getting worse," Horan says at the beginning of the story. "More people incarcerated, more crime, more families torn apart. Problems Gov. Bill Lee believes can be solved with one solution — criminal justice reform."
Then to the governor.
"I got involved in a prison ministry 20 years ago, and that planted a seed in my heart for why the system was not working," Lee says.
Later, he adds: "There will be children that will not go to prison because of the changes that we've made. There will be prisons that aren't built, there'll be lives that are saved, there'll be money not spent on a system that's not working."
I can't speak for the governor's heart or any seeds that may have been planted in it. But he is, to put it politely, misrepresenting his approach to the criminal justice system and the effect of this year's legislative session on that system. A local news station can't change what the governor says about his policies, but they can — and, you know, should — put his statements into context that doesn't sound like it was taken from his campaign literature. They should express some curiosity, maybe even skepticism, about how he frames his approach to this issue and the pronouncements he makes about his policies.
Lucky enough, another Nashville reporter has already done this.
Earlier this month, The Tennessean's Natalie Allison reported on the fact that along with signing the two bills above, Lee also approved a number of new laws that will create harsher punishments and increase incarceration. From the story:
But the governor will also sign into law more than 20 other bills passed in recent weeks that send more people to prison for longer, the cost of which offsets much of the decreased incarceration outlined in Lee’s legislation. Those bills total more than $40 million in new costs each year, adding to the state’s $1.1 billion prison budget that continues to increase annually....
Prison sentences will double for drag racing; they increase from a misdemeanor and six months to a felony and six years for farm vandalism; reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon becomes a 15-year sentence, up from six.
Nashville attorney Daniel Horwitz has noted
that the Re-Entry Success Act will apparently not apply retroactively, significantly reducing its impact on the system Lee says is broken.
The governor has also not once used the biggest tool he has to change that system — the power of clemency. He can pardon people and commute sentences, all by himself. He has not done it a single time. Instead, since taking office, he has signed off on four executions and showed every indication of allowing four more in 2020 before the pandemic interrupted them. Far from believing the system is broken, he would appear to believe that it can be trusted to decide that a person should be put to death.
Horan reports that Lee believes problems like increasing incarceration, rising crime and devastated families can only be solved through criminal justice reform. The governor says, more than once during the interview, that "the system" is not working. But does he believe these things? A cursory glance at the legislation he has signed this year and the other actions he has or hasn't taken on criminal justice suggests something else. His administration has pursued or supported laws that will lead to a net increase in incarceration and money spent on prisons, not a decrease. At a bare minimum, when a journalist gets him to sit down and talk about this issue, they should ask him about that.
