Twice in two days, black men were shot and killed by police officers. Last night, five police officers were killed while protecting a protest in Dallas. The common denominator is an eroding rule of law driven by cyclical crime, violence, and poverty. It is reasonable and necessary to both stand up against injustice and mourn the lives of the officers lost — the two are not mutually exclusive; reform will reduce crime, protecting police and communities alike.
Calls for police accountability and justice reform have grown louder in recent years. Groups like Black Lives Matter have championed this issue and garnered the support of the Democratic Party in its entirety, capturing media attention and the eyes of the nation.
Criminal justice reform is not a liberal issue, nor just an African-American issue. It is not incompatible with fighting crime, it is not an anti-law enforcement agenda, and it is absolutely not a losing issue for conservatives, especially not with our police officers being murdered. If we respect our ideology and our Constitution, supporting criminal justice reform is common sense.
America has the single highest incarceration rate in the world — six times the rate of our Canadian neighbors. Law enforcement officers want to serve and protect, but the system often perpetuates the crime it wishes to fight. The War on Drugs, over-incarceration, racial components, the role poverty plays in lives of crime, they all intertwine, but we do not need to agree on all of these separate issues to break ground. We know that economic empowerment and free-market solutions are the single best objective measures in fighting poverty. Locking people away for nonviolent offenses, thus creating government burdens out of people who would have otherwise been upstanding citizens and taxpayers, flies directly in the face of sensible economic policy. The two are incompatible. If we really want to be tough on crime, we will work to lower recidivism rates and reduce cycles of crime and poverty, keeping our communities safer and the taxpayers’ wallets fatter.
We cannot dismiss these calls for reform as social justice angst, not when the same solutions will also save our law enforcement officers.
As conservatives, we are motivated by a strict adherence to our constitutional principles, the rule of law, and factual statistics. It is shown time and time again nationwide that focusing on prisoner re-entry into society dramatically reduces the chance that they will ever commit another crime or return to prison. Focusing on how to best enter former prisoners back into our society will create mutual benefit between the communities and the individuals, keeping everyone safer, especially law enforcement. Concentrating on treatment for the addicted instead of just incarceration, rolling back mandatory minimum sentences that remove any discretion a judge may exercise in specific cases, investing in ways for inmates to learn skills so that they are able to return to productive members of society upon release, there absolutely are tangible policy steps to be taken. No one is advocating for the release of violent offenders. These policies are study-backed, they will make us safer and save us money, the time to implement is well upon us.
Take the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, supported by Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas). Though currently stalled in Congress, it is an excellent start. It is not radical to propose that as the greatest nation in the history of the world we should not allow the executive branch of our government to overreach and kill unarmed men, to lock up more people than any other developed nation in the world, or to take property from citizens via asset forfeiture when they were never even officially charged with a crime. Rights are unnecessarily taken away, and our communities are no safer; this is not how a free society works and we should be ashamed.
From Libertarian to Neoconservative, pro-cop and pro-gun, it is time for action. Like many of you, I proudly fly a Gadsden flag, definitely do not tread on me. If this is an ideology we wish to continue embracing without kidding ourselves we must find common ground, admit the problems and work on our criminal justice system.
