We write to express our concerns that any expansion of the federal carjacking statute would needlessly sweep more young people into federal prisons and deepen racial disparities, without improving public safety. The federal carjacking statute is already extremely broad and carries heavy penalties, including death. Yet the Federal Carjacking Enforcement Act (S. 1572) would expand it to encompass individuals who have no intent to kill or seriously injure and make nearly every carjacking in the United States chargeable as a federal crime. We urge you to vote no.

The undersigned organizations are deeply concerned about the destructive impact of insufficient funding allocated for the federal public defense system. This system is already in crisis due to prior decisions to underfund and cut its budget. To avoid even greater harms to the entire federal criminal justice system, we are asking that you ensure that the Defenders Services Office receives full funding at $1.76 billion for FY 2026.

Chairman Biggs, Ranking Member McBath, and distinguished members of this Subcommittee, thank you for holding this hearing on the topic of overcriminalization. As you know, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has been working on this issue for over a decade and its work was instrumental in inspiring one of the earliest hearings on this issue, held by this Subcommittee, in 2010 on a bipartisan basis, as well as the full Judiciary Committee’s formation of the bipartisan Over-Criminalization Task Force a few years later in 2013.

As organizations committed to due process and the right to counsel, we urge you to oppose the Laken Riley Act. This bill would subject undocumented persons to mandatory, prolonged detention based on mere arrest for theft-related offenses, including shoplifting, and additional offenses added in the Senate. Such sweeping detention would circumvent due process protections, ensnare innocent persons, and greatly interfere with the representation of counsel necessary for the fair administration of justice.

As organizations committed to due process and the right to counsel, we urge you to oppose the Laken Riley Act. This bill would subject undocumented persons to mandatory, prolonged detention based on mere arrest for theft-related offenses, including shoplifting. Such sweeping detention would circumvent due process protections, ensnare innocent persons, and greatly interfere with the representation of counsel necessary for the fair administration of justice.

The problem of overcriminalization is multifaceted, with many aspects that pervade our criminal legal system, including the criminalization of conduct that is not harmful to society or others; criminal statutes that lack adequate mens rea, or intent, requirements; ambiguous and vague language in criminal statutes that provide insufficient notice and insufficient limitation on what conduct is criminalized; and the imposition of vicarious liability with insufficient requirement that the charged person was involved in, or even knew about, the underlying conduct.

The undersigned organizations are deeply concerned about the hugely destructive impact of proposed cuts to the federal indigent defense system. To avert the crisis, we are asking that you ensure that the Defenders Services account is fully funded at the requested amount.

The undersigned groups urge you to oppose the Stopping Harmful Image Exploitation and Limiting Distribution (SHIELD) Act of 2023 (S. 412), which would create a new federal crime carrying a one-to-five-year prison sentence for sharing intimate photos of a person without that person’s consent. We recognize that this bill is well intentioned, but we are concerned that it will sweep in and criminalize innocent conduct and worsen the trial penalty that many criminal defendants—including many people who are actually innocent—face in our justice system.

We are deeply concerned about the devastating impact of proposed cuts to the federal indigent defense system. … Unless corrected, these cuts could cause the loss of 9-12% of current federal defender staff—even after defenders cut critical programming such as training and IT improvements. Such layoffs would almost certainly decimate the federal defender system, degrade the overall quality of federal indigent defense, and undermine the administration of justice for countless federal defendants. …

We are deeply concerned about the devastating impact of cuts proposed by the House Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government on the federal indigent defense system. The House subcommittee’s mark is $122 million less than requested and could cause the loss of 9% of current federal defender staff. Such layoffs would almost certainly decimate the federal defender system, degrade the overall quality of federal indigent defense, and undermine the administration of justice.

We urge you to vote “no” on S. 1080, the Cooper Davis Act. The bill purports to address the sale of methamphetamine, fentanyl, and “counterfeit substances” by coopting online services to report the alleged or suspected creation, manufacture, or distribution of these substances … Rather than meaningfully addressing the public health crisis caused by such substances, this bill would … undermin[e] the Fourth Amendment and the Stored Communications Act, likely with disproportionate effects on people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and other marginalized communities.

We, the undersigned organizations, write in opposition to S. 686, the “Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act,” or the “RESTRICT Act.” The RESTRICT Act aims at information and communications (ICTs) technologies like TikTok that are considered a threat to the United States. 

The 126 undersigned organizations representing a broad, diverse group of stakeholders write today to endorse the Reentry Act. This critical legislation would allow incarcerated individuals to receive medical services supported by Medicaid thirty days prior to the individual’s release.

The undersigned national, state, and local public health and criminal justice reform organizations write today to urge you to reject and vote NO on the Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl (HALT) Act (H.R. 467). This bill permanently schedules fentanyl-related substances (FRS) on schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) based on a 2 flawed class definition, imposes mandatory minimums, and fails to provide an offramp for removing inert or harmless substances from the drug schedule.

We write to express our opposition to efforts to obstruct the District of Columbia’s Revised Criminal Code Act, including any resolution of disapproval or budget rider. The Revised Criminal Code Act of 2022 (RCCA) is the product of 16 years of research, an expert commission, 51 public meetings, extensive public feedback, and robust negotiation. ... We urge you to oppose these attacks on the RCCA and vote against any resolution of disapproval.