Shorter federal prison terms is a good idea. Give Trump credit.
This year is ending with one truly surprising development, a real man-bites-dog story: Donald Trump is poised to sign bipartisan legislation that will make America a slightly more decent place. I’m talking about the First Step Act, the criminal justice reform bill championed by Jared Kushner. The measure passed the Senate, 87 to 12, on Tuesday and the House on Thursday, and Trump is expected to sign it soon. According to Inimai Chettiar, of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school, it will be the largest federal effort to reduce prison populations ever enacted.
In some ways that’s not saying much; experts expect the initial impact to be quite modest. Most incarcerated Americans are in state prisons, and the First Step Act affects only those in federal custody.
Still, for many people, the new law will be a great blessing. Among other things, it retroactively applies a law that reduced the disparity between sentences for crack and powder cocaine, which could make around 2,600 prisoners eligible for immediate release. It also allows inmates to earn more time off for good behavior, gives judges more discretion on draconian mandatory minimum sentences, and requires that inmates be incarcerated closer to their families.
Further, that the bill is being supported by Trump — a man who fetishizes law and order and openly encourages police violence — changes the politics of criminal justice going forward. This moment, where conservatives are actually competing with liberals to find ways to free at least some prisoners, is the culmination of a transformation on the right that’s gathered speed over the last decade.
Charles Colson had prepared the ground with Christian conservatives, mobilizing evangelicals on behalf of prisoners. That work then intersected with the Tea Party’s hostility to big government, a story David Dagan and Steven Teles tell in their book “Prison Break: Why Conservatives Turned Against Mass Incarceration.”
But it is also a product of something more personal and less ideological. Many of the people who’ve tried to move the Republican Party toward criminal justice reform have seen prison, or at least criminal prosecution, firsthand.
The most notable example is Kushner, whose father spent 14 months in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal campaign donations. Then there’s Colson, former special counsel to Richard Nixon, who founded Prison Fellowship, his Christian nonprofit, after serving seven months for obstruction of justice in connection with the Watergate scandal.
The conservative former newspaper magnate Conrad Black, a Canadian, became an outspoken opponent of America’s prison industrial complex after spending 37 months in a U.S. prison for fraud and obstruction of justice. Bernard Kerik, a onetime bodyguard to Rudy Giuliani who rose to become New York City police commissioner, became an advocate for prisoners after serving three years in prison for felonies including tax fraud. Patrick Nolan, a conservative who once led Republicans in the California Assembly, turned against mass incarceration after being sentenced to 33 months in connection with a bribery scandal.
These histories suggest that, ironically, mass incarceration might end sooner if more white-collar criminals were locked up. Again and again, when people who are used to being treated with a modicum of decency and respect confront the reality of American prison life, they are stunned and demand change.
And now, at last, we are close to getting it, at least for some. Perhaps there’s a genuine silver lining to the deep corruption of the Republican Party. Modern conservatism can no longer ignore the interests of people accused of committing crimes.