Controversial KY crime bill passes Senate committee over chairman’s objections

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday brushed aside an attempt by its own chairman to soften a controversial anti-crime bill, instead sending the bill to the Senate floor largely intact.

House Bill 5, dubbed the Safer Kentucky Act by its sponsors, would toughen much the state’s criminal code, adding new penalties for the homeless, shoplifters and vandals, as well as carjackers, fentanyl dealers and violent offenders, the last of whom would go to prison for the rest of their lives after “three strikes.”

The bill now proceeds to the full Kentucky Senate. If the Senate passes it, the House must agree to relatively minor changes the Senate committee approved on a 7-to-3 vote.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Whitney Westerfield, a longtime criminal-justice reform advocate who is leaving office this year, argued passionately at an earlier committee hearing on Tuesday in favor of his own rewritten version of the bill.

Westerfield’s proposed substitute would have narrowed the bill’s mandate for longer prison sentences to fewer and more specific felony charges.

And Westerfield, R-Fruit Hill, would have given local police more latitude to steer homeless people toward shelters and mental health programs rather than have officers cite or arrest them for “unlawful camping,” as the bill currently requires.

One of the few items Westerfield managed to get added to the bill were “restorative justice” programs that seek the rehabilitation of offenders and reconciliation with crime victims. The bill now contains language creating a local advisory committee in each county on “juvenile restorative justice,” to help at-risk youths deal with their behavior.

After a brief spike during the COVID-19 pandemic, the violent crime rate has fallen in Kentucky and nationally, according to crime data Westerfield presented to his committee. Kentucky actually has one of the country’s lowest violent crime rates, he said.

But Westerfield’s GOP Senate colleagues, supported by police and prosecutors, said they nonetheless preferred to advance a crime bill that was closer to the original.

What actually passed the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday was based on a substitute offered by Sen. John Schickel, R-Union, a retired law enforcement officer who said the General Assembly has gone too far in recent years trying to rehabilitate criminals at the expense of public safety.

“We really don’t know what makes us safe. But we do know what justice is,” Schickel said.

“And when someone carjacks a car, there’s no consequences,” he said. “When somebody’s camping out in your front yard, and there’s no consequences or people are ruining your neighborhood with open drug use and things like that, that causes a community to spiral down.”

Schickel said the “meat and potatoes” of his version of the bill consisted of three parts:

▪ Creating a “three strikes and you’re out” rule for violent felony offenders. Kentuckians convicted of violent felonies on three separate occasions would face life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for the third offense.

The bill also would expand the definition of “violent offenses,” for which offenders must serve at least 85% of their prison sentences, to include more crimes. Those new offenses include attempted commission of a capital or Class A felony, first-degree burglary, second-degree robbery, first-degree arson, first-degree strangulation, carjacking and first-degree wanton endangerment when it involves the firing of a gun.

▪ Adding the crime of unlawful camping to charge homeless people who remained on streets, sidewalks, parks, under bridges or blocking entrances to homes, businesses or public buildings, with the intent to sleep or camp. A first offense would be a violation with a $250 fine. Future offenses would be a Class B-misdemeanor.

People would be prohibited from sleeping in their vehicles at one location for more than 12 hours.

Local governments would be required to enforce the unlawful camping ban or risk penalties from the state’s attorney general.

▪ Elevating the offense of first-degree fleeing or evading police up one criminal charge level depending on the severity of the circumstances.

For example, first-degree fleeing or evading police would be elevated from a Class D to a Class C felony, and the defendant would have to serve at least half of the five- to 10-year prison sentence. This would include people driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or whose flight created or caused a substantial risk of injury or death to others, or who were fleeing after an act of domestic violence.

At Thursday’s hearing, Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, said that as an emergency room doctor in Louisville, she has witnessed the carnage of teenagers suffering gunshot wounds.

“The prevalence of guns and the availability of guns for our children has skyrocketed. We have 13- and 14-year-old children with access to guns that are shooting each other,” Berg said. “Does this bill do anything to address access to guns for our minors in this state? Does it make any effort to curb that?”

“It does not. That would not be germane to the bill,” replied the crime bill’s lead sponsor, Rep. Jared Bauman, R-Louisville. “That would be a separate bill, access to guns for juveniles.”

Groups from the political right and left spoke in opposition to the bill at this week’s committee hearings. They cited its estimated cost of more than $1 billion over the next 10 years and concerns over the dozens of overcrowded jails around Kentucky that already are overwhelmed with local inmates and state prisoners.

Joey Comley of Elizabethtown, who is Kentucky director of the conservative criminal-justice group Right on Crime, said the bill’s sponsors don’t have any Kentucky-based research to show that the state is suffering through a crime wave that would make the legislation either necessary or successful.

Louisville Public Media has reported that a long list of academic studies and media reports cited by Bauman, the lead sponsor, in many cases had nothing to do with the bill’s contents. Also, the list appears to have been copied from a 2023 paper by the Georgia Center for Opportunity that recommends crime solutions for the city of Atlanta, not the state of Kentucky.

“I believe Kentucky is safe,” Comley told the Senate committee. “That’s why I chose to live here after 20 years of living abroad and living in a number of other states. I chose to raise my family here.”

“Any comprehensive criminal justice overhaul like House Bill 5 requires Kentucky data,” he added.

Lacy Boling, executive director of Paducah Cooperative Ministry, told the committee, “House Bill 5 puts a boot on the neck of Kentuckians who are already in distress.”

Boling said her group’s transitional housing shelter holds at least 40 women every night. She said she’s offended by the bill’s “unlawful camping” language that would charge people with a crime for being homeless in public, including the women she serves.

“I guess my concern is, are these the criminals we’re talking about?” Boling asked.

“Is Caitlin, who waited 14 months to be approved for subsidized housing, is she the criminal we’re talking about? Is Crystal, who works overnight at a full-time job and still can’t afford housing, is she the criminal? Are the 30 families displaced from the Noble Lodge (Apartments) closing in McCracken County on a cold winter afternoon, are these the criminals?”

The legislature should provide more affordable housing assistance rather than criminalize people for being out on the streets, Boling said.

Among its many other provisions, the bill would:

▪ Elevate criminal charges by one offense level for adults convicted of engaging in a conspiracy with minors.

▪ Expand Kentucky’s death penalty eligibility to include murder of a “first responder” — such as a police officer, firefighter or emergency medical worker — who was killed in the line of duty.

▪ Deny probation, parole or other forms of conditional release for people who are convicted of a crime in which they used a gun if they were previously convicted of a felony, or if they knew or should have known the gun was stolen, or if they were on any form of conditional release already.

▪ Require at least one person to attend a youth’s juvenile court hearings alongside the youth, or else be fined up to $500 and ordered to perform up to 40 hours of community service.

▪ Expand the definition of first-degree manslaughter to include the sale of fentanyl or fentanyl derivatives if the use of the drug by the buyer led to their death.

▪ Reduce the level of property damage necessary for a charge of first-degree criminal mischief, a Class D felony, from $1,000 to $500. If the defendant repairs or replaces the damaged property, the charge can be reduced to a misdemeanor.

▪ Create the Class B felony of carjacking, or stealing someone’s motor vehicle away from them by means of force or intimidation.

▪ Clarify a “shopkeepers privilege” that would allow business owners and their employees to use “a reasonable amount of force necessary” to protect themselves and prevent the escape of a suspected shoplifter they’ve detained or the loss of goods from their businesses. This is intended as a criminal and partial civil shield.

At Westerfield’s request, the Senate committee added language to specify that retailers could not use deadly force to stop shoplifters from escaping their store with merchandise.

▪ Prevent charitable bail organizations, such as the nonprofit Louisville Bail Project, from posting $5,000 or more in bail to secure an inmate’s release from jail. It also would prohibit the nonprofit groups from posting bail for inmates charged with certain crimes, such as domestic or dating violence or felonies designated as violent offenses.

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