FROM STAFF REPORTS

MONTGOMERY – State Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, has been chosen to once again chair the powerful Judiciary Committee in the Alabama State Senate.

Under Ward’s leadership, the Legislature in 2015 passed a historic reform of the state’s criminal justice system, with the aim of gradually reducing Alabama’s overcrowded prisons by shuttling some non-violent offenders towards rehabilitation programs.

“We have made a lot of strides with criminal justice reform, but we still have a long ways to go. We have to continuously innovate and use smart, data-driven approaches to figure out ways to keep recidivism as low as possible,” Ward said. “Criminal justice reform is an area where Republicans and Democrats actually agree on a lot, as evidenced by the fact that Cory Booker and Ted Cruz both voted for President Trump’s First Step Act, which I think is a smart reform of the federal sentencing guidelines.”

Ward will also serve on the following Senate committees in the new legislative term: Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Development, Confirmations, Finance and Taxation—General Fund and Healthcare.

“The Republican majority has accomplished some huge conservative reforms over the past few years. Thanks to a strong commitment to fiscal responsibility, proration hasn’t happened once to Alabama’s schools since 2011, and we have passed a historic pro-life constitutional amendment, to cite just two examples,” Ward said. “In this new legislative term, I look forward to working with other legislators and Governor Ivey to tackle some of the remaining big challenges facing our state, like infrastructure modernization and education reform.”

In 2018, Ward sponsored a law that increased penalties for trafficking and distributing fentanyl, an extremely powerful synthetic opioid that claimed the lives of 157 Alabamians in 2016, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Ward is entering his ninth year as President of the Alabama Law Institute, which is housed in the Law Center Building at the University of Alabama. The purpose of the Institute is to “clarify and simplify the laws of Alabama, to revise laws that are out-of-date and to fill in gaps in the law where there exists legal confusion,” according to its mission statement.

The 2019 regular session of the Alabama Legislature will start on March 5.