But there is still a tiny sliver of hope for reformers, captured in yet another headline, also from Politico: “Ryan pushes sentencing reform in face of skeptical GOP.” Evidently, House Speaker Paul Ryan is considering making one last drive during the lame-duck session, when the election will be over and many legislators will have, as President Obama once put it, “more flexibility.” It will be a long shot, especially as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he doubts his chamber can handle the issue in the time remaining.
But whether the effort is moribund or on the verge of springing back to life, this is a good time to review what it seeks to accomplish and why it has struggled so mightily, especially to win support from conservatives.
As I wrote in June, done carefully, justice reform can shrink the government, save money, and help ex-offenders get their lives on track without threatening public safety. Whatever justification there was for increasing incarceration decades ago, that trend continued longer than it needed to, and incarceration rates remain unjustifiably high. However, while many conservative intellectuals embrace these arguments, the case has not really trickled down to conservatives on the ground. Some red states have passed reforms, but in general conservatives are more skeptical of reform than liberals, and incarceration has fallen more in liberal states than in conservative states since 2007.
The federal effort is a test of whether Republicans nationwide can really get behind justice reform, and the prospects look dim.
