Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., announced Monday she backs a criminal justice bill that has the White House's support, The Hill reports.
The former prosecutor, who is frequently floated as a possible challenger to President Donald Trump in 2020, described the legislation as a "compromise of a compromise," but said it "takes positive steps to improve our justice system," and makes "long overdue" changes, particularly to the Fair Sentencing Act.
"All of the Act's sentencing reforms should be applied retroactively, and the Act should further expand application of earned good time credits, place more prohibitions on private prisons which profit from the incarceration of individuals, and further limit the use of electronic monitoring," Harris said.
The bill's most prominent supporters include Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the second-highest ranking Democrat in the Upper Chamber, and Cory Booker, D-N.J., another potential White House contender in 2020.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., criticized the legislation Sunday, saying "the bill did not take on one of the most fundamentally unfair problems in our criminal justice system — it does nothing to fix the cash-bail system," according to the New York Daily News.
The Senate is set to vote on the bill this week, with an initial vote scheduled for early Monday evening.
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