When Trump And Cory Booker Agreed: 5 Years Of ‘First Steps’ (VIDEO)

NEWARK, NJ — Remember the time that former president Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Cory Booker found common ground on criminal justice? Booker does – and he still thinks it was a good idea.

Recently, the Democratic senator from New Jersey – a Newark resident – took a look back on the anniversary of the First Step Act, which Trump signed into law in December 2018. The law was bipartisan effort to “improve criminal justice outcomes” and reduce the size of the federal prison population – while also maintaining public safety.

Booker was a big supporter of the law, which expanded job training and other programs that reduce recidivism rates among federal prisoners. It also expanded early-release programs and changed sentencing laws, including mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.

Is it working? According to The Sentencing Project, the U.S. Department of Justice is reporting “promising” results so far:

“The recidivism rate among people who have benefitted from the law is considerably lower than those who were released from prison without benefit of the law. Among the nearly 30,000 individuals whose release has been expedited by the First Step Act, nearly nine in every 10 have not been rearrested or reincarcerated. This 12% recidivism rate lies in stark contrast to the more typical 45% recidivism rate among people released from federal prison.”

Republicans such as Trump stepped across the aisle with Democrats such as Booker to get the legislation over the finish line. The cooperation took place despite a bitter war of the words between the two political heavyweights that was taking place at the time.

Trump repeatedly mocked Booker, the former mayor of Newark, for “running the city into the ground” during his tenure. Booker, meanwhile, was a consistent critic of the Trump administration, blasting the former president’s record on issues such as tax reform, immigration and the environment.

But as it turned out, even two political foils can find some things to agree on. See Related: Trump, Booker Find Common Ground On Criminal Justice Reform

“Our whole nation benefits if former inmates are able to reenter society as productive, law-abiding citizens,” Trump said when the legislation hit his desk in 2018.

The former president called the First Step Act a “historic” effort.

“America is the greatest country in the world and my job is to fight for all citizens, even those who have made mistakes,” he tweeted. “This will keep our communities safer, and provide hope and a second chance, to those who earn it. In addition to everything else, billions of dollars will be saved.”

Booker agreed, saying that the country’s criminal justice system has been “broken” for decades.

“You cannot deny justice to any American without it affecting all Americans,” he charged. “That’s why the passage of the First Step Act is so meaningful – it begins to right past wrongs that continue to deny justice to millions of Americans.”

Now – five years later – Booker hasn’t lost his enthusiasm for the bipartisan effort, which he says is making a real difference in people’s lives.

“I've gone to the homes of people who were released by this bill,” he said at a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing (watch the video below).

“You want to talk about family values?” Booker continued. “Reunite someone who's overincarcerated with their children. You want to talk about stronger communities? People who were released by this bill are leading nonprofits dedicated to keeping other people out of prison.”

“I come from being a mayor of a city – which has Republicans, Democrats, independents – where the number one issue was public safety,” the senator recalled.

“I found out very quickly that the police leadership – from the FBI director to my local beat cops – knew that the solutions to security were not solely law enforcement … that in fact, they felt like they were treating symptoms of a larger problem,” he said.

In Booker’s home city of Newark, public safety officials have been taking a different approach to battling violence and crime over the past few years, approaching violence as a “public health” issue – not purely a punitive one. See Related: NJ’s Largest City Is Becoming A Safer Place To Live, Crime Stats Show

That new way of thinking – which recently got a big round of applause from another former president, Barack Obama – hasn’t only been taking place in New Jersey, Booker pointed out.

“When I became mayor in 2006, you started seeing examples coming from Red States of people taking a different approach,” the senator recalled.

One example? Texas, he said.

“Texas became a model for prison reform in 2007, when the state allocated funds for drug treatment, mental health and rehabilitation for incarcerated individuals,” Booker said. “The Texas recidivism rate fell as did violent crime dramatically.”

By 2018, Texas had closed four prisons, savings Texans $3 billion – which shows that you can lower your prison population and lower crime by empowering people, creating more beloved communities and dealing with health care, and mental health care and addiction issues, Booker said.

“Red State after Red State we're showing this,” Booker continued. “South Carolina passed major sentencing reform in 2010 and saw revocations for parole violations fall 33 percent, recidivism rates fall to 13 percent and the state's prison population went down 14 percent, saving taxpayers almost half a billion dollars – and again, crime went down.”

“And so, it frustrates me when opportunistically we use issues of fear and understandable concerns about crime to drive wedges between our society – as opposed to looking at the practitioners out there in states and local levels who are actually showing a lot of success,” Booker said.

“As much as we'd like to think that ideas that were passed in the First Step [Act] are somehow original – they're not,” the senator insisted. “They came from Republicans and Democrats who just wanted to solve problems.”

• See Related: When New Jersey Dems, GOP Agree (Going Beyond Blue And Red)

Send local news tips and correction requests to eric.kiefer@patch.com. Learn more about advertising on Patch here. Find out how to post announcements or events to your local Patch site. Don’t forget to visit the Patch Newark Facebook page.