Is the political imperative to be 'tough on crime' finally over?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/18/political-imperative-tough-on-crime

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Spurred on by the historic #BlackLivesMatter movement and the increasing realization our enormous prison population is both inhumane and costing us a fortune, presidential candidates – who once competed with one another over who was “tougher on crime” – are falling all over themselves to praise reform efforts meant to reduce the number of prisoners in the US. Even more shocking: it’s coming from both parties. But will the much-needed attention lead to actual change?

President Barack Obama this week became the first sitting president to visit a federal prison, where he sounded more like a prison rights activist than a law-and-order president in his fantastic speech on the injustices faced by incarcerated Americans. He even ticked off statistics lamenting how the US to become by far the biggest jailer in the world: the US has only 5% of the world’s population but 25% of its prisoners; we have four times as many prisoners as China; and African-Americans and Latinos are 30% of the US population yet make up 60% of prison inmates.

Before that, Hillary Clinton’s first major policy speech of her presidential campaign was not on the economy or foreign policy, but on criminal justice reform. “It’s time to end the era of mass incarceration” she said. While she was rightly criticized for being short on specifics, it’s still a testament to how the issue now requires the attention of any standard bearer of the Democratic party – especially given her husband’s role in perpetuating the problem in the 1990s.

And Bill Clinton, for his part, apologized this week for passing his administration’s “tough on crime” bill in the 1990s, which for many years he openly bragged about. “I signed a bill that made the problem worse,” he told the NAACP this week. “And I want to admit it.”

Republicans, egged on by their billionaire benefactors, are following suit. House speaker John Boehner signaled that he was ready for criminal justice reform bills to come down the pike in Congress, where several garnered support from both parties but have still languished. Even Jeb Bush and Rick Perry are seemingly flipping their stances – but given their long histories in support of the current carceral system, it’s hard to see their most recent statements as anything other than a cynical ploy to take advantage of the changing political winds.

(Though it should be noted that President Obama quoted Senator Rand Paul approvingly in his prison speech this week; Paul has been pushing for prison reform for years.)

But the ultimate proof that America’s tough-on-crime-and-the-cost-be-damned policies of the past are on the way out might be Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. His entire career has been based bragging about locking people in jail; Buzzfeed took an in-depth look at Walker’s record, which criminal justice reform advocate David Menchsel called “stunning”. He noted: “Even among loathsome pro-carceral politicians, Walker’s record is terrible.”

But all of a sudden, Walker has gone silent on the issue on the campaign trail – he doesn’t even bring it up in passing. His sudden reticence may have something to do with the fact that his billionaire benefactors, the arch-conservative Koch brothers, are backing criminal justice reform to the tune of millions of dollars (and even partnering with their usual political enemies, the Center for American Progress). Or maybe even he has realized that Americans are finally seeing the damage that throwing millions of people in jail can do to the country’s economy and well-being.

Whatever the reason, the next move is holding these politicians to account. President Obama may have commuted dozens of prisoners sentenced earlier this month – the most in presidential history – but that barely scratches the surface in the number of applications from non-violent offenders currently serving long jail sentences. The vast bureaucratic morass that these prisoners have to go through is something our government created; the President has the power to act much more swiftly if he chooses.

(And while Obama continues to talk about unarmed black citizens being shot by the police, his Justice Department continues to argue for policies in the Supreme Court that ensure that the police who use excessive force will not ever be held to account.)

Congress, for its part, may be talking a good game on criminal justice reforms, but there are still a large group of fire-breathing Republicans who are upset President Obama used his commutation power to “continue[] this Administration’s plainly unconstitutional practice of picking and choosing which laws to enforce and which to change.” How using a power that is specifically bestowed to the president in the US constitution is unconstitutional is anyone’s guess, but it does show the willingness of some to fight any reduction in the prison population. It is a cash cow for many politicians after all.

It will take more than just bipartisan talk and pretty speeches to achieve any kind of criminal justice reform, but it should be the number-one priority of the Obama administration and Congress until the end of his term. For once, both parties have a chance to do something unquestionably good; we’ll see if they take it.