Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s advice to any violent crime perpetrator now on the street: “I would go turn myself in today before we pass this bill. Because when we pass this bill, you are going to be doing 100 percent (of your time).”
The bill is a so-called truth-in-sentencing measure being maneuvered through the Tennessee General Assembly by Sexton and other supporting legislators. His ongoing support and determination put him on stage in Memphis on Thursday.
Alongside Sexton (R-Crossville) at the Airways Precinct, 2234 Truitt, was Mayor Jim Strickland, Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis, Shelby County District Atty. Amy Weirich and Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner Jr.
Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s signature would be needed to make any such bill embraced by legislators into state law. Lee, too, was in Memphis on Thursday talking about support for fighting crime in Memphis but he wasn’t part of the Sexton appearance.
Instead, Lee’s focus included meeting with Davis and Col. Matt Perry, who guides the Tennessee Highway Patrol and who once oversaw the Memphis District as Major over the Field Operations West Bureau. He has not embraced the truth-in-sentencing legislation, maintaining a repeated refrain that he doesn’t look at the details of legislation until it makes it a lot closer to his desk.
Taking to social media after conferring with Davis and Perry, Lee said, “We talked about partnership. We talked about the state’s investment in recruitment and retention and training (of law enforcement officers). And we talked about 20 new Highway Patrol Officers that we will put in Shelby County to assist the Memphis Police Department in their efforts to fight crime.”
Accounting for differing viewpoints, the need for solution results relative to the problem of crime – particularly violent crime – is shared across multiple group boundaries. Memphis is coming off of another record-breaking year of homicides and the killing largely goes on unabated in 2022. And, children are not being spared.
At the Memphis press conference, Sexton said the pending truth-in-sentencing legislation, which in its current form would make for longer sentences for 24 felonies, would ensure those violent criminals be required to serve all of their time.
“Violent criminals laugh at the sentences they get because they know just how much time they will actually have to serve,” said Sexton. “They hate to be tried in federal court because in federal court, when you are given 20 years, you will serve all 20 of those years.”
However, data does not support truth-in-sentencing as an automatic, slam-dunk clamp on the spread of violent crime.
In brief remarks at the Thursday gathering, Weirich said, “We need truth-in-sentencing to keep violent criminals off the streets for longer periods of time. … This will have a tremendous impact on crime in Shelby County. Victims of violent crime deserve truth-in-sentencing.”
As the push for a truth-in-sentencing law has evolved, Weirich also has maintained that such a law would bring a measure of fairness to criminal perpetrators as well, saying they and their victims warrant clear and easy-to-understand sentencing laws.
Bonner did not speak at the press conference.
Strickland reportedly met with Lee on Wednesday. On stage with Sexton, he said the City of Memphis was grateful for the Lee administration’s investment of funds for more law enforcement training and recruitment and for “putting 20 dedicated Tennessee Highway Patrol officers in his budget for Shelby County.
“This will make our interstates safer and allow Memphis police officers to focus more on city streets.”
Calling violent crime a Memphis plague that he and most citizens are tired of, Strickland reiterated some of his recurring points. Among them were: there is no quick fix, the need for more and enhanced services for “those who have paid their debt to society,” increased opportunities for young people” and the funding of universal, need-based Pre-K for the first time in the city’s history.
He also touted expungement efforts and the recent funding of what he called a comprehensive and collaborative gun violence prevention program directly aimed at interrupting “the cycle of violent crime” and which mirrors best practices in other cities.
Equally important to those efforts, he said, and “a key piece to the puzzle, we must have consequences for those who commit violent acts in our community. Statistics show stiffer-sentencing laws work….”
Davis said a truth-in-sentencing law would be “another layer of assistance that we need as we fight crime every day. Our officers arrest individuals over and over again.
“Those individuals, especially those who commit violent crimes, many times it’s not one or two violent crimes that they have committed before, it is 10, 15, 20, 30.”
Still, during his Memphis stop, Lee said this: “Partnership, investment in law enforcement today is the way to improve crime in our states and that’s what we are committed to do.”
Moving through the Tennessee General Assembly as Senate Bill 2248-House Bill 2656, the pending legislation carried a fiscal note of $40.7 million for incarceration as of Feb. 13.
State Rep. Antonio Parkinson, who represents District 98 in Memphis and also serves as chairman of the Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators, said, “We applaud reducing violent crime in our state. It would have more effect, however, if all parties had input though.”
(This story reflects a report by TSD contributor Dr. Sybil C. Mitchell.)
