![]() The statement was the centerpiece of a new campaign dubbed "Right on Crime." Run by the Austin-based Texas Public Policy Foundation, it was launched to vouch for the conservative bona fides of criminal-justice reform. The change in course became obvious in 2012, when prominent conservative leaders such as Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist issued a "Statement of Principles" that declared the American justice system broken. As a result, the change in conservative politics created the political space for liberal politicians to heed the cries of their own base to reconsider mass incarceration. The tough-on-crime ethos was never embedded as deeply among liberals as it was among conservatives. In some cases, that support grew out of a genuine conviction that government needed to crack down, but it was driven primarily by electoral calculus, as liberals decided they could no longer afford to be attacked on the issue. Of course, Democratic politicians supported many of the policies now being decried as unduly harsh. ![]() It was the conservatives who required the more thoroughgoing change for trans-partisanship to become possible, moving from the blunt party orthodoxy that "prison works" to the idea that excessive incarceration is just another example of government overreach. On the left, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Open Society Institute, and other organizations ensured that a commitment to lowering incarceration would remain embedded in the liberal identity, even as Democratic politicians tried their best to prove themselves "tough on crime." ![]() On the right, the evangelical leader Charles Colson was arguing even at the height of the crime war that better prison conditions, less incarceration, and better re-entry services were genuinely conservative objectives. It was driven by ideological diehards on both sides, who worked for years against near-hopeless odds before their labors bore fruit. Trans-partisan agreement on criminal justice was a long time in the making. Trans-partisanship, by contrast, is typically led by ideological true-believers on the back benches, and distinct factions that converge on shared policy positions through separate, independent routes. This is very different from bipartisanship, in which established institutions facilitate compromise by bringing two sides together to split the difference with "grand bargains" brokered by party leaders. These distinct narratives make prison reform a case of "trans-partisanship" - agreement on policy goals driven by divergent, deeply held ideological beliefs. Conservatives see the expansion of prisons as a case of big government run amok and stress the potential for offenders to be spiritually redeemed. Liberals tend to view "mass incarceration" as a product of structural racism and crony capitalism, and emphasize the disadvantaged conditions of most offenders. Liberals and conservatives have arrived at these conclusions from different principles. An electorally driven consensus in favor of ever-expanding punishment is being replaced by fairly broad elite agreement on the need to reduce our extraordinary levels of incarceration, make prison conditions more humane, and steer offenders back into productive lives. Hillary Clinton's first major policy speech focused on reducing unnecessary incarceration - and, despite attacking her on everything else, no Republican candidate has gone after her for being soft on crime. In the 2016 election, the storyline has been almost completely reversed. Elections at the state level in that period followed the same pattern, with Republicans pushing for ever more severe criminal penalties and Democrats following them as fast as they could run. Clinton famously flew to Arkansas to stage-manage the execution of a mentally disabled killer. Bush touted a record of escalating the drug war during the Reagan years. Bush and Bill Clinton each tried to prove he was toughest on crime. ![]() In the 1992 presidential campaign, George H.W.
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