EDITORIAL: It's Time to Get Smart on Get-Tough Prison Policies

December 27, 2011

U.S. prison populations have increased nearly eightfold over the past 35 years, while crime rates, like gas prices, have bounced up and down. In fact, recent crime rates are similar to what they were in 1970, before America's prison-building boon started. More than one in 100 Americans are now locked up, and more than 95% of them will eventually go home.

With government budgets at all levels busting, the nation can no longer afford a nearly $70-billion growth industry that has ripped urban communities, failed to make cities safe, and diverted enormous resources from other social needs. Michigan, for example, spends more on prisons -- $2 billion a year -- than it does on higher education.

U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., a decorated Marine and combat veteran, is one of the few national politicians with the courage and sense to question the nation's most expensive failure. He has spoken with surprising candor about class, race and the need to make the criminal justice system fairer and more effective. The soft-on-anything tag won't work on Webb, who also served as Navy secretary under President Ronald Reagan.

The irrational defeat, late this year, of Webb's overdue plan to create a bipartisan National Criminal Justice Commission should not deter him from trying again next year. Too much is at stake for Webb, or Congress, to walk away. The act would create a bipartisan commission of experts to undertake an 18-month review of the nation's criminal justice system and make recommendations for reform. With nearly 2.4 million people in prisons and jails, the U.S. has the world's highest incarceration rate.

Webb's bill -- first introduced in 2009 -- was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee and U.S. House last year. Despite strong bipartisan support from dozens of diverse organizations, including law enforcement, Senate Republicans blocked passage of the bill two months ago. Supporters included the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Sheriffs' Association, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Fraternal Order of Police, the NAACP and the ACLU.

Rejecting the first thorough review of the U.S. criminal justice system in 45 years shows how partisan and dysfunctional the U.S. Senate has become. For the good of the country, politicians must stop framing policy debates in terms of "liberal" and "conservative," or Republican and Democrat, and start talking about polices that work and don't work. No government program has worked less effectively than the race to incarcerate.

Over the last four years, Webb, a Vietnam veteran, has courageously tried to put the issue of criminal justice reform on the national agenda. Having fought on far tougher battlefields than the U.S. Senate, he should reintroduce the National Criminal Justice Commission Act next year.