The high-water mark of reform aspirations was captured in a bill sponsored by Representatives Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican with impeccable law-and-order credentials, and Bobby Scott, a progressive Virginia Democrat. Progressives began to think of mass incarceration as a civil rights issue.īy the beginning of 2014, criminal justice reform was turning mainstream. It seemed-at least until recently-that two decades of declining crime rates had taken some of the power out of law-and-order fear-mongering and paved the way for a critical look at the system America built on the foundation of those "couple of words."Ĭonservatives began asking why their loathing for unaccountable big government had exempted the institutions of law enforcement. And polls have found strong public support for reducing or even eliminating mandatory-minimum sentences and letting prisoners earn time off their incarceration by participating in programs like job training and drug counseling. Reform has been backed by a strange-bedfellows alliance of conservative and progressive interest groups and many big-city law enforcement officials.
House Speaker Paul Ryan professed support, as a way of slowing the community-destroying cycle of poverty, crime and punishment-not to mention a way of demonstrating that his party is not indifferent to the blacks and Latinos disproportionately ensnared by the current system. President Obama yearned to make justice reform part of his legacy and lobbied for it in public and in private. Serious reform-like reducing the country's bloated prison population, shifting emphasis from retribution to rehabilitation, and generally making the system deliver on its broken promise to keep us safe-has enjoyed a formidable array of advocates for years now.
At this point, I think we can safely dispense with the question mark.
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