A New Year Brings New Hope for Criminal Justice Reform

I'm back from vacation, and I want to start my first post of 2009 by thanking Brian Sullivan for his great posts in my absence. He'll be sticking around as a guest blogger, so don't get too upset at my return. (And I promise you won't see any photos of Dick Cheney in this space for at least a few days.)

I enjoyed the lively discussions sparked by Brian's posts in the last couple of weeks - including this one on the moral code taught by the military and this one on private crime in a public war. I also enjoyed his coverage of our incarceration of the mentally ill. This is a topic I'll revisit several times in the weeks and months ahead.

I was traveling in India, a fascinating country packed with millions upon millions of success stories, contradictions, potential and poverty. It was pure vacation, but I brought a few stories home with me and will post the first - on India's new arrest policy - later this morning.

While traveling abroad, I couldn't get out of my mind the enormous change on the horizon for my home soil. Eight days from today, we'll have a new President of the United States (that guy up above). We hope it will mean good things for criminal justice reform, but he has other things on his plate and he has sent mixed messages on drug policy reform, the death penalty, mandatory minimums and other issues close to my heart.

He has not sent mixed messages, however, on issues like torture, Guantanamo and, most importantly, our country's treatment of its poorest residents. I think Barack Obama's biggest immediate impact on the criminal justice system will be to extend a helping hand to the country's disadvantaged. When our federal government once again treats poor people like people, I hope we'll see a drop in crime. Every time we create a job or a path to affordable higher education, we've given a person an option other than selling drugs or stealing to put food on the table. Simply by recognizing the value of our most disadvantaged citizens (and non-citizens), Obama will spark a drop in crime.

But this week will see the first challenges to Obama's criminal justice policy, as his pick for Attorney General, Eric Holder, faces tough questions in his Senate confirmation hearings (set to begin Thursday). Sen. Mitch McConnell, the minority leader from Kentucky and the creator of the one of the funniest and most random attack ads of the 2008 campaign, said Holder would be grilled on his role in the Clinton administration - and, especially, Bill's pardon of Marc Rich.

"The attorney-general nominee, Mr. Holder, has got serious questions to respond to with regard to his role in the ... pardons at the end of the Clinton administration and some other matters," McConnell said Friday. "Beyond that, I don't anticipate trouble for the new president's nominees."

Advocates for alternatives to the War on Drugs (myself included) aren't too fond on the Holder pick, as he has expressed support in the past for mandatory minimums, and the short-sighted belief that locking up low-level drug offenders will end the problem of drug-related violence in our cities.

It'll be an interesting story to follow this week, and I'll post more as it happens.