When The Votes Are In, 'Tough on Crime' Fades

by Matt Kelley · 2010-11-01 08:31:00 UTC
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Voters head to the polls tomorrow across the U.S., and while control of Congress and support for the Tea Party have been the focus of media attention, 30 new governors will be elected and countless state legislatures are up for grabs.

These state offices will determine the future of our criminal justice policy, and if you believe the "tough on crime" blather you hear in stump speeches and TV ads, you might be expecting a new prison-building boom after the polls close. But with state budgets still in dire straits, we're more likely to see compromise and continued reform as the grandstanding fades and the real work begins.

In an insightful article last week at The Crime Report, Steve Yoder wrote on the criminal justice policies we're likely to see implemented by the largest new class of governors in 40 years, and found that they could go either way.

Deborah Fleischaker of Families Against Mandatory Minimums told Yoder that she didn't expect a huge post-election swing toward tough-on-crime, saying: “I think sometimes people say things in campaigns before they really understand the full scope of the problem."

But others suggest that the backlash in these elections could bring about a pendulum swing away from the brief rise of the "smart-on-crime" reforms that found bipartisan support in many states during the recession. If conservative governors and statehouses view wins tomorrow as an endorsement of a policy change, we could see a slowed adoption of alternatives to incarceration, of treatment, of shorter sentences and community supervision.

I agree with Fleischaker, however. Although politics are cyclical and irrational justice policy sometimes springs from a reactionary vote, the evidence and public support for alternatives to massive prisons continues to grow stronger. With the economy still limping, newly elected governors won't be proposing many new prison cells or long sentences. It'll take more than one election to shake the momentum of criminal justice reform.

Photo Credit: Bill Brady Ad

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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