Which brings us to a final important provision in the bill: It would “would remove the profit incentive for forfeiture by redirecting forfeitures assets from the Attorney General’s Asset Forfeiture Fund to the Treasury’s General Fund.” Read the full text of the bill here.

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Paul, along with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), appears to be walking the walk when it comes to criminal justice reform. In addition to the redemption bill he and Booker co-sponsored that I wrote about a few weeks ago, Paul also recently introduced a bill that would bar the federal government from prosecuting medical marijuana patients in states where medical marijuana is legal.

I’ve seen some critics on social media and elsewhere point out that Paul appears to be positioning himself for a presidential run, so this may just all be part of his run-up to 2016. As I wrote in my prior post, I’m skeptical of the notion. This particular bill notwithstanding (civil asset forfeiture is extremely unpopular, and there is actually a history of Republican-led reform on this issue), it seems unlikely that most of these reforms are going to help Paul in the Republican primaries. And as Emily Bazelon has pointed out, it isn’t at all clear how a policy such as restoring voting rights to felons would benefit Republicans. It’s far more likely to hurt them. It seems to me that Paul is actually leading on these issues.

But even if Paul’s reform crusade is all political posturing, so what? If these bills pass and result in needed reforms, I doubt that the former prisoners with restored voting rights, the victims of forfeiture abuse or the ex-inmates who can now pursue a second chance at life with a clean record will care much about the motivations of the sponsors of the bills that made those things happen.

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More encouraging, think about what this allegation that Paul is posturing really means. In 1996, the House speaker sponsored a bill that would have allowed for the execution of marijuana distributors. That former speaker, Newt Gingrich, more recently advocated for prison reform. (Aside: It’s worth noting that Gingrich is all over the place on these issues — in the same year that he wrote the linked op-ed, he praised the draconian drug policies of Singapore, where drug dealers can face mandatory execution.) A U.S. president who left office as recently as 1992 once suggested something similar.