Bill Moyers: Can a Left-Right Coalition Bring About Real Prison Reform?

[LAGC]

Editor’s note: On Friday, the “Smart Sentencing Act,” which the ACLU calls “the most significant piece of criminal justice reform to make it to the Senate floor in several years,” passed the Senate Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support. You can read the ACLU’s press release here.

There’s not much that Tea Party Republicans and liberal Democrats agree on these days. Surprisingly, one of them happens to be scaling back mass incarceration, the subject of a live-streamed meeting today of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The motives vary among and between key legislative leaders as ideologically disparate as Republican Sens. Mike Lee (UT) and Rand Paul (KY) and Democrats Patrick Leahy (VT) and Dick Durbin (IL). But whether motivated by concern for civil liberties, unsustainable state and federal budgets or a New Testament-inclination for giving second chances, one fact trumps all differences: The US houses by far the largest incarcerated population in the world at 2.2 million people as of year-end 2011. That smudge, as well as unsubtle championing of sentencing reform by attorney general Eric Holder, has galvanized a relatively quiet bipartisan effort over the past five years. Advocates say Congress is taking on mass incarceration one reform at a time. The latest are tucked into the 1,582-page FY2014 omnibus spending bill, and other reforms are coming down the pike. Below, a guide to these new developments.
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http://billmoyers.com/2014/01/31/can-a-left-right-coalition-bring-about-real-prison-reform/

It's not just the Tea Party either, even some "Establishment" neo-cons like Newt Gingrich have been making some gestures lately indicating that America's out-of-control prison growth needs to be reigned in.

(Of course, their motivation is probably freeing up more money from wasteful domestic spending to wage some more wars abroad... but finding some common ground over prison reform would be nice.)

[djean111]

1. Can a Left-Right Coalition Bring About Real Prison Reform?

Only if no one in the coalition owns stock in privatized prison companies.