In this era of extreme political contentiousness in the United States, it seems as if the conservatives are the conservatives, the liberals, the liberals and never the twain shall meet.
Except . . . there is one issue on which the two adversaries—or at least some of them—can agree. Criminal-justice reform.
The strange bedfellows, Republican Newt Gingrich and liberal activist Van Jones, collaborated on a piece for CNN. They agreed that “locking up millions of people for very long periods of time at ballooning costs is not a wise response to nonviolent crime. Warehousing nonviolent offenders for years behind bars has been an economic, moral, and human catastrophe.”To bolster their argument, they pointed out that the U.S., with only 5 percent of the world's population, accounts for 25 percent of those incarcerated worldwide. And it doesn’t look as if those statistics are getting better. We have four times as many inmates as we did 40 years ago. That has cost the nation more than $80 billion annually. A staggering one in every 100 Americans is in jail.
As an example of how skewed the system is, Gingrich and Jones cited a 19-year-old man, barely more than a kid, who got hit with a mandatory minimum 15-year sentence for drug possession. His time in jail hits up the taxpayers for $60,000 a year. OK, you might think, he will receive job training, education, and drug treatment. You would think wrong. This kid, well into his 30s, will reenter society with nothing to show for his long incarceration. As a felon, it will be next to impossible to find meaningful employment. So, no one should be surprised if he ends up behind bars again.
Gingrich and Jones wrote, “As a corrections system, this makes no sense. We must rethink our approach from the ground up. And for federal crimes, we can start by building on bipartisan reforms that are spreading across the country at the state level.”
Bipartisan reforms. It is encouraging they think it can happen. They posit that “The criminal justice system is flawed and desperately needs reform. Our overreliance on prisons has failed America. It is past time for both political parties to come together and fix a bad system of their own making. We believe this moment offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity for reforms that will save entire communities and transform the lives of millions of Americans. We must not let it pass.”
If that reform comes, it must include improving the juvenile justice system. Maybe the Gingriches and Jones will recognize the benefits of MST and other evidence-based programs. One can only hope.
UPDATE: February 19th. Add Koch Industries and the Center for American Progress to the list of unlikely bedfellows. They too have found at least one thing they can agree on: The nation’s criminal justice system is broken.
