In fractious Washington, there are very few policy reforms that command bipartisan support. One of them is the result of an emerging consensus that America’s criminal justice system is badly broken.
Statistics tell part of the story. The United States has 5 percent of world’s population but houses 25 percent of its prisoners. Its federal prison population has more than quadrupled since 1980, to 2.3 million souls. Prisons and criminal justice agencies combined cost taxpayers $260 billion a year.
But there is a much deeper story to tell involving broken lives and shattered dreams. The rise in America’s prison population is largely a result of “tough on crime” policies of the 1980s and 1990s that reduced crime rates but also put millions of low-level and nonviolent offenders behind bars for years or decades. The loss of brothers, sons, husbands and fathers has been devastating for individuals and families, especially those in minority communities.
The U.S. has created a criminal justice system that prioritizes punishment over rehabilitation. This means that many released offenders emerge from prison suffering with mental health or substance abuse problems, or are otherwise unable to cope with life on the outside.
Rep. James Sensenbrenner wrote in a recent Washington Examiner op-ed, “Our prisons have become warehouses that simply lock away offenders, rather than treating the underlying issues that brought them there. This neglect contributes to high recidivism rates and puts a revolving door on the gates of America’s federal prisons.”
A bipartisan group of legislators has come together to pitch reforms that include ending mandatory minimum sentences, expanding alternatives to incarceration for low-level offenders, curtailing the use of solitary confinement and enacting programs to help released offenders get back on their feet.
Most reforms have so far taken place at the state level. But momentum is building for changes at the federal level. Figures as diverse as the Koch brothers and the American Civil Liberties Union have been calling for reforms.
Bill Clinton recently apologized for some of the “tough on crime” measures he signed as president in the 1990s. And House Speaker John Boehner has made statements in support of reform, as well.
President Obama has made it clear that criminal justice reform will be a priority in the last year and a half of his presidency. In recent weeks, he has commuted the prison sentences of 46 nonviolent prisoners, become the first sitting president to visit a federal prison and delivered a well-received speech on prison reform to the NAACP.
A raft of bipartisan reform bills has been introduced in both houses of Congress. Perhaps the most ambitious is Sensenbrenner’s SAFE Act, co-sponsored by Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., which, among other things, would limit the application of mandatory minimum drug offenses and give judges more discretion when sentencing nonviolent criminals, who make up roughly three-quarters of federal inmates.
America’s experiment in mass incarceration has come at a high cost, both for taxpayers and in terms of human misery. It’s time that experiment was ended, and our criminal justice system reformed.
