Between the early 1950s and mid-1990s, crime rates rose steadily across the United States. Crime destroyed neighborhoods, ruined lives, and topped public opinion polls of the issues Americans cared about most.
Unsurprisingly, politicians from both the left and right learned that being “tough on crime” was an electoral winner. More police, more prisons, and harsher punishments were all steps that just about everyone came to support.
The policies that took hold were successful in reducing serious crime. Crime rates have declined steadily for nearly 20 years and now stand at about half their all-time highs. But the social costs of this approach also become apparent. Today, a country with 5 percent of the world’s population has nearly a quarter of its inmates. Policymakers from across the political spectrum are beginning to wake up to this reality, looking for ways to cut prison populations, treat drug abuse, and rein in other excesses of the “tough on crime” era.
Examples of just how broadly this attitude has spread of late can be found in a new anthology published by New York University’s Brennan Center called Solutions: American Leaders Speak Out on Criminal Justice Reform. The collection includes essays from nearly every figure considered a major candidate for president in 2016, including Hillary Clinton, Gov. Scott Walker, Gov. Chris Christie, and Sen. Rand Paul. (Jeb Bush is notably absent.)
Overall, the sensible ideas and sound analysis in the book outweigh its weaker arguments by a healthy margin. The essays show strong bipartisan support for promoting drug treatment, reducing the number of federal crimes, and dealing with minor offenses by means other than incarceration. Several of the essays are worth reading in their own right, particularly scholar Mark A. R. Kleiman on prisoner reentry, Marc Levin of the Right on Crime effort on results-based policies, and Sen. Ted Cruz on reducing federal penalties. But none introduces truly novel ideas, and a few, mostly in passing, trot out the left’s discredited theories that blame crime on poverty and bigotry.
For the first time since 1992, it’s possible that crime may figure as a major issue in the next presidential election. But rather than trying to figure out harsher ways to punish criminals, candidates from both parties are likely to advance ideas about how public safety can be preserved with a more compassionate and nuanced approach to criminal justice. If criminal justice does remain a live topic in the campaign, it will be a rare case of an issue bubbling up as much because of policy successes as because of failures.
