STOP ADVERTISING VICTIMS OF EXPLOITATION ACT OF 2014

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, while I support the bipartisan efforts we are taking today with several bills to enhance our effort to prevent, investigate, and prosecute acts of sex trafficking, I must raise serious concerns about H.R. 4225, the Stop Advertising Victims of Exploitation Act of 2014, which I cannot support in its present form.

To be sure, the bill has the laudable goal of prosecuting those who knowingly facilitate sex trafficking by advertising certain prohibited sex acts. However, I must object to the mandatory minimum sentencing provisions which this new offense would trigger under existing statutes.

Under the sex trafficking statute, as amended by this bill, a conviction for advertising of sex trafficking would result in a mandatory penalty of 10 or 15 years of imprisonment, depending on the age of the victim and other circumstances of the crime.

While the acts prohibited by the legislation will usually warrant such long sentences, mandatory minimum sentences are the wrong way to determine punishment under this or any other criminal statute.

Regardless of the nature or the circumstances surrounding the offense, the role of the offender in the particular crime or the history or characteristics of the offender, H.R. 4225 will require a judge to impose a 10- or 15-year sentence.

Even if everyone in the case, from the arresting officer, the prosecutor, the judge, even the victim believes that the mandatory minimum would be an unjust sentence for a particular defendant in a case, this bill still requires the sentence to be imposed.

The imposition of a mandatory minimum sentence is particularly troublesome when one considers the possible scope of defendants who could be prosecuted under this bill.

Notably, the prohibition on advertising does not only apply to the sex trafficker who places the ad, but also applies to individuals and entities who facilitate or have a minor role in publishing the ad, such as someone who works for an Internet Web site which is involved.

Those who are employed by a venture that benefits financially from the ad, but whose role in the organization does not place them in the chain of command with respect to acceptance or publishing the illegal ads could therefore be prosecuted under the bill.

Specifically, there may be circumstances in which all of the employees of a communications company, including receptionists or computer maintenance workers, know that the venture publishes such advertising, but chose to look the other way.

They should be held liable under the provisions of this bill, but many of them would certainly not warrant a mandatory sentence, in certain circumstances, of 15 years, not all of them.

During the Judiciary Committee's markup of the bill, I offered an amendment to remove the application of the mandatory minimum provisions of this new bill and, instead, allow a judge to apply an appropriate sentence under the circumstances of the case, up to a statutory maximum of life imprisonment.

Given the complicated nature of the Internet communications networks and other forms of advertising which would be affected by this bill, the role of the judge in evaluating each case is particularly important. While long sentences may be appropriate under the facts of a particular case, Congress cannot know the facts of every case in advance.

Removing mandatory minimums, while still permitting the lengthy statutory maximum penalty of life imprisonment, as my amendment would have done, will provide the appropriate spectrum of sentences for culpability and proportionate punishment.

Mandatory minimum penalties are already a major issue of concern for our criminal justice system, and we should not make matters worse by passing a new one with this bill. Studies of mandatory minimums have concluded that they fail to reduce crime, they waste the taxpayers' money, and they often require judges to impose sentences that simply violate common sense.

Therefore, I am pleased that the Judiciary Committee's bipartisan Over-Criminalization Task Force is working diligently to assess our Federal criminal code and make recommendations for improvements. The penalties, including mandatory minimums, in the Federal code are among the issues the task force will consider. And while these issues are under review, we should not be passing new mandatory minimum sentences. In fact, if we ever expect to eliminate mandatory minimums from the code, we must first stop passing new ones.

Now, mandatory minimums did not get into the code all at once but one at a time, each in a bill that otherwise made good sense. So if we are going to stop increasing the number of mandatory minimums, we must oppose bills that contain them.

So while I strongly support the efforts to do more to combat the serious problem of sex trafficking by taking steps such as strengthening our laws and providing additional resources for law enforcement and victims, I must, unfortunately, oppose this bill in its current form because it creates new mandatory minimums which can be expected to require a judge in the future to impose a sentence that violates common sense.