The Safer Kentucky Act is finally making its way to the Kentucky Senate.

The House easily passed the omnibus crime bill six weeks ago.

A Senate committee just advanced the bill, though not without pushback from a lone Republican senator.

Our June Leffler tells us more.

As we began tonight's legislative update.

Jefferson County Republicans told the Senate Judiciary Committee this week that Kentucky must get tough on crime and.

That society has a right to protect itself from the criminal element.

The omnibus bill reworks the state's criminal code.

Provisions include a three strikes rule that would put repeat violent offenders away for life.

It read, classifies and stiffens penalties for violent crimes.

What was a D or C felony may become a B or A felony, and it adds more crimes to the list of what's considered violent like attempted violence.

If you burn a house down, you rape a woman and then you kill somebody, you're going to prison for the rest of your life.

There's nothing wrong with that.

And you know who likes that the most?

The person who would have been the fourth victim of violent crime.

Democrats opposed this bill in the House and in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and outgoing Republican was the one to push back.

My own fault you for trying to bring something forward, But three fourths of the bill cast the net.

That's three times wider than it needs to be.

A champion for diverting people away from incarceration.

State Senator Whitney Westerfield proposed changes to House Bill five, but the sponsors say they prefer Republican State Senator John Nichols amendment that retains the spirit of the bill.

We really don't know what makes us safe, but we do know what justices and when someone carjacked a car and there's no consequences.

Or someone's camping out in your front yard and there's no consequences.

Or people are ruining your neighborhood with with open drug use and things like that, that causes a community to spiral down to policy.

Groups with different politics say locking up more people for longer is just too costly.

The left leaning Kentucky Center for Economic Policy says House Bill five will increase correction costs by more than $1,000,000,000 over the next decade.

A right leaning group agrees.

You know, a literature review from the NIH shows that less than 4% of violent crime and property crime is committed by somebody over the age of 60.

This is the time in an inmate's life when the cost of incarceration will begin shouldering a larger share of health care costs.

It'll become increasingly expensive to keep these inmates in prison.

You got to think about the out years and the pressure that this is going to put on the budget because a recession will happen, revenues will drop and guess where you cannot cut?

It's going to be the Department of Corrections.

So where do you go get those cuts?

You're going to find them in the programs that you would rather be funding.

Before the vote Thursday, Democrats from both chambers stood together to oppose House Bill five.

There appears to be inadequate data to support the policies that have been presented.

When State Representative Jared Bowman presented the Save for Kentucky Act on the House floor.

He read research titles to back his bill.

Since then, Louisville Public Media reported that not all those sources suggest higher sentencing reduces crime.

The nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice reviewed available research on sentencing and public safety.

It says keeping people in jail for longer means they aren't committing crimes on our streets.

That's called incapacitate prison.

And it could reduce violent crime by 5 to 10%.

But longer sentences do little to deter people from committing violent crimes in the first place or from reoffending.

The bill also calls for fines and misdemeanor charges for public camping.

A bill sponsor says this isn't meant to lock up folks, but to get them into drug treatment.

Even formerly addicted homeless people that I've talked to.

They said we need tough love.

We need somebody to force us into rehab because we're in the throes of addiction.

We don't want to go.

The Coalition for the Homeless says that won't get people off the streets.

But affordable housing is an issue for everyone.

A treatment bed is a clinical setting that is great for getting people detoxed.

What we lack is like a continuum of housing options for those that are exiting treatment after that 28th day.

Republicans in the Senate Judiciary Committee handedly passed House Bill five.

We do have a crime problem in Kentucky, and I think this bill will go a long way to address it by a multilateral approach.

It gives people an option to improve their lives and get better by utilizing treatment.

And at the same time, it protects society from repeat violent offenders.

It now heads to the Senate for Kentucky.

Edition of June LEFFLER.

Senate Senator Whitney Westerfield was the only Republican to vote against the bill.

Both Democrats on the committee also voted no.