Reform: It's a Bipartisan Thing

Death penalty foes descended on Louisville, Ky. this weekend, in the latest wave of an emerging trend among criminal justice reform advocates: bipartisanship. It turns out that even in this much-examined age of political polarization, conservatives and progressives occasionally prove capable of privileging common sense over egos and ideologies.

The Louisville gathering was the annual conference of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP), featuring Republican candidate for governor in Montana, Roy Brown, among others. Echoing arguments by NCADP, Brown made it clear that his opposition to capital punishment is, in fact, firmly rooted in his conservative perspective. In particular, his views that the death penalty is a). unjustifiably expensive and b). that "life is precious from the womb to a natural death" are two cornerstones of an effort to woo conservatives into adopting what many see as an inherently conservative position -- that is, that governments shouldn't be in the executions business.

Since the Nixon administration, Republicans have focused their rhetoric on being "tough on crime" -- in other words, in favor of harsher sentences, more prisons and police. The view would seem to contradict the conservative/libertarian view that less government equals better government, but this irony was repeatedly lost on voters, including those who handed Gov. Michael Dukakis his resounding 1988 electoral defeat after the Willie Horton attack ad aired.

Now, though, conservatives may be returning to their conservative roots. In a time of expanding state budget deficits, conservatives are finding it more difficult to overlook the cost of tough-on-crime policies. “It’s a remarkable phenomenon,” Norman L. Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, told the New York Times' Adam Liptak this fall. “The left and the right have bent to the point where they are now in agreement on many issues. In the area of criminal justice, the whole idea of less government, less intrusion, less regulation has taken hold.”

Prof. Mark Kleiman, of UCLA's School of Public Affairs, is among the leading advocates for dumping tough-on-crime policies in favor for a smart-on-crime approach. What he calls his life's work, When Brute Force Fails, was published last year and heralded as a weighty contribution to discussions on criminal justice reform.

"After four decades of being 'tough on crime,' it's time to get smart instead. We need to be as tough as necessary, but no tougher," Kleiman says. "The goal is not to put as many people behind bars as possible, but to make people safer in their homes, workplaces and neighborhoods."

Shouldn't this be the goal of the criminal justice system? Increasingly, conservatives and progressives are answering with one voice: yes.

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