Andy Rainer said his son was dead because his killer had only faced slap-on-the-wrist penalties for previous offenses.

Rainer’s son Drew, a 22-year-old Rhodes College student, was shot in the chest in his apartment last fall during a robbery. A police officer told Rainer his son’s efforts to fight off the attackers caused the gun to jam, saving his girlfriend’s life.

“My son died defending the people he loved,” Rainer said at a state House Criminal Justice Committee hearing last month.

Man accused in fatal shooting of Rhodes student arrested

Rainer said the shooter had a long criminal record and was on parole for aggravated robbery.

He was in Nashville with family to speak in favor of “truth in sentencing,” a bill which would eliminate the possibility of parole for a handful of violent crimes.

Its Republican supporters say those who commit violent crimes should serve 100% of the sentence given to them by a judge or jury, arguing the current sentencing standards don’t adequately deter crime. They also say it would save victims and their families from the trauma and uncertainty of possible early release.

“This person chose not to take advantage of the many advantages given to him to reform his life and, in my opinion, he should have been in prison,” Rainer said. “If this law had been in effect, I would not be here today. Drew would be preparing to graduate from college and enter the next phase of his very promising future, having fun with his friends and celebrating with our family.”

The covered crimes include murder, aggravated assault, human trafficking, aggravated burglary and carjacking.

It also includes “The manufacture, delivery, or sale of a controlled substance,” if the person has been convicted at least twice of class A, B or C felony drug crimes.

The bill would force the state to spend an extra $27 million to keep people incarcerated, according to the General Assembly Fiscal Review Committee. Torrey Grimes, legislative liaison and senior counsel for the Tennessee Department of Correction, said the department’s cost estimate was about $90 million.

“It’s embarrassing how quick many of these folks are released from a sentence that they were ordered to serve by an elected judge, in many cases after having been convicted by a jury of their peers in their communities,” state Rep. William Lamberth (R-Portland), the House majority leader and a former prosecutor, said at a hearing Feb. 16. “And it’s not fair to the defendant. It’s not fair to the victim. It’s not fair to anybody.”

It has wide — but not unanimous — support among Republicans, prosecutors and law enforcement. Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis all support it.

But criminal defense attorneys, most Democrats and some Republicans oppose it. They say taking away the possibility of early release disincentivizes inmates from taking classes, getting job training or participating in other programming that decreases the risk of recidivism.

The Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers opposes the bill. David Raybin, on behalf of the association, told a Senate committee he wrote a similar law under former Gov. Lamar Alexander. He said it led to overcrowded prisons and riots, leading to millions of dollars in damages. A federal court took over the state prison system.

Strickland pushes bill to give violent offenders longer sentences

“I was proud of that legislation, and we thought it did good things,” he said. “But in a few years, prisons were filled to capacity, eventually overflowing.”

Michael Working, a former president of the criminal lawyers association, put a sharper point on it.

“Truth in sentencing is absolute garbage, and it is being championed by very mean-spirited people,” Working said. “Tennessee is incapable of housing more prisoners, but the only proposed solutions among community leaders are to continue jailing more people. Yet none of those elected officials have the courage to work a shift in a Tennessee prison. Their grandstanding does not make us safer.”

Notably, Gov. Bill Lee has not said if he supports it and has made statements suggesting he may not. He told Strickland and the Shelby County legislative delegation that he prefers a prevention approach, and he rejected the idea that criminals can’t be redeemed. Lee’s spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment.

“Currently, I believe efforts to curb violent crime should focus entirely on crime prevention,” Lee stated in a March 2 letter to Strickland. “Historically, state efforts have focused on sentencing, which tacitly accepts that violent crime will occur while doing little to actually prevent that crime from happening.”

‘Among the most incarcerated places on earth’

Tennessee had the 11th-highest incarceration rate in the country in 2021, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. Five neighboring states have higher rates. Out of every 100,000 people, 838 Tennesseans were behind bars compared to 562 in El Salvador, 329 in Russia and 130 in the United Kingdom.

“Tennessee is among the most incarcerated places on earth,” Working said in an email.

Tennessee’s prisons are operating at about 92% of capacity, according to a Feb. 28 TDOC snapshot. The department is also facing a labor shortage and reports of dire conditions in many facilities.

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The United States prison population has declined in the past few years, according to the Pew Research Center, but the country still maintains the highest incarceration rate in the world. More than 2 million Americans were incarcerated in 2019.

“Crime rates do not drive a state’s prison population,” a TACDL position paper states. “Policy choices do.”

Making parole a right

Lee’s record on the issue of parole, and criminal justice reform more broadly, is mixed.

He has frequently touted his service with a prison ministry, making arguments based in his faith and fiscal conservatism that the criminal justice system isn’t serving victims, offenders or taxpayers.

While progressive advocates for criminal justice reform say he hasn’t fulfilled some of his promises, they give him credit for the 2021 Reentry Success Act.

That law made parole a presumptive right for inmates, meaning the Board of Parole would have to argue why they didn’t deserve early release rather than the inmates having to argue why they did. It required the board to schedule earlier hearings for more people.

Lamberth, one of the most vocal supporters of truth in sentencing, sponsored that bill in the state House.

But the board, whose members are appointed by the governor, did not follow the law, saying it was too burdensome to schedule all those hearings. It lost a lawsuit against a man demanding a timely hearing.

‘What we’ve been doing is clearly not working’

The “truth in sentencing” bill still needs approval from the finance committees of both chambers.

The House Criminal Justice Committee passed it Feb. 23, and on March 9 the House Finance, Ways and Means Committee placed it behind the budget. That means the committee will only consider it after passing the bill approving government spending for the year.

On the Senate side, it passed the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, March 16. Democratic state Sens. Sara Kyle and London Lamar of Memphis voted against it, as did Republican state Sen. Kerry Roberts of Springfield. State Sen. Mike Bell (R-Riceville), the committee chair, abstained.

It goes next to the Senate Finance, Ways and Means Committee.

“I’m torn on this bill,” Bell said. “Our goal is to see those people not reoffend, not commit crimes again, and what’s the best way to reach that goal? … I’m not sure, necessarily, that a strict truth in sentencing scheme (or) framework is what is going to get us to that ultimate goal.”

Matthew Charles, of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, cited data showing longer sentences don’t deter crime in his testimony.

“A person that has to serve 100% of that sentence means it closes the door for them to have any incentive toward rehabilitating themselves,” he said.

Charles was one of several who suspected truth in sentencing would require the state to build more prisons. At another hearing, Charles said: “This bill only incapacitates a person during their period of incarceration.”

Lamberth, though, said there’s no chance of recidivism while the person is incarcerated. He downplayed the $27 million cost estimate, saying it represents “A scintilla of a percentage of the overall (correction) budget.”

State Rep. John Gillespie (R-Memphis), who is sponsoring related legislation, believes the cost will go down over time because people will be deterred from crime.

“I hate that we’re asking these questions (about cost), because people are dying,” he said in an interview. “Right now, there are people that are robbing other people at gunpoint and they’re going to jail for a matter of months. And that’s just not right.”

Supporters say truth in sentencing is targeted at the most violent criminals, and that the law can coexist with other reform efforts, such as investments in education. House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville), for example, has expressed support for expanding drug courts and other ways to divert people from incarceration.

“In this legislation, we’re not locking someone up for smoking a joint out on the street, with no prior record,” Gillespie said in an interview. “I’m all for investing in preventative measures… What we’ve been doing is clearly not working, and this is a small part to an overall solution.”