NASHVILLE – Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s criminal justice reform legislation is dead for the year, as is a separate legislative effort by Rep. Patsy Hazlewood, R-Signal Mountain, to put a new victims’ rights constitutional amendment before Tennessee voters in 2022.
The measures fell by the wayside this week as state lawmakers returned to the Capitol to respond to massive projected shortfalls affecting the state’s budget as well as coronavirus-related issues and other legislation.
“COVID-19 response and the budget are the top priorities during this special legislative session, but we look forward to revisiting reform proposals during the next legislative session,” Lee spokesman Gillum Ferguson said Wednesday.
Before becoming governor in 2019, Lee worked as a volunteer in a prison ministry group. Last year, he commissioned a task force that came up with a series of “data-driven policy recommendations” aimed at improving public safety, revising sentencing for some nonviolent offenders and increasing support for prisoners’ reentry into society.
Elements of those recommendations wound up in two bills, which collectively sought to create a new “Office of Reentry Services” within the state Department of Correction to “promote the successful reentry of criminal offenders” whose sentences have expired.