States Looking Beyond "Get Tough" Extremism to Criminal Justice Reform

Last week, my newspaper column looked at the encouraging statements of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) on the issue of drug policy and (in Webb's case) overall criminal justice reform. These are politically taboo topics, but they are hugely important. And, as with most issues, it looks like the states are already taking the lead on important reforms.

Here's a new AP report:

After cracking down and incarcerating hundreds of thousands, cash-strapped states including New York, Kentucky and Kansas are pulling back. They face an uncommon confluence of dire economics and prisons bursting at the seams and several have changed, in whole or in part, their stances on hard punishment.

Their reasons: the get-tough laws didn't always work, especially when it came to slowing recidivism, the revolving door of prisoners who get out, mess up again, and come back. There were legal challenges, and questions about whether the punishment always fit the crime.

And of course, there's the money. In tough economic times, the expensive laws are increasingly being deemed expendable.

As the Progressive States Network detailed in a recent report, the private prison industry has aggressively lobbied for the most draconian federal and state criminal justice laws - and for an obvious reason: The more idiotic our criminal justice laws, the more people will be incarcerated, and thus the more taxpayer cash goes to the prison-industrial complex.

Breaking that prison-industrial complex's hold on our criminal justice policy will be key to making the new talk about criminal justice reform into reality.

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