Attorney General Eric Holder announced several sweeping changes to the criminal justice system this week, and has already earned the ire of conservative observers (but not for reasons you may suspect).
Holder spoke in San Francisco Monday at the American Bar Assocation. He said that America’s criminal justice system is “in many respects broken” and that we need “systemic changes” to the way criminal suspects are charged and punished.
“The course we are on is far from sustainable,” Holder said.
The highlights: Holder proposed reducing sentences for nonviolent offenders (most of whom are “warehoused” on drug offenses) and a closer look at racial disparities in sentencing.
He cited a “deeply troubling” report issued in February which showed that African-American criminals often receive sentences that are 20 percent longer than those issued to white offenders for similar crimes.
“This isn’t just unacceptable–it is shameful,” he said.
Of course, the controversial Attorney General’s recommendations were quickly criticized by conservatives . But interestingly, the consensus among the right seems to be “it’s about time.”
National Review cataloged the comprehensive conservative response to Holder’s announced reforms, and remarked that while the news is “welcome,” Holder is “late to the ‘mandatory minimum’ reform bandwagon — and he’s late to criminal-justice reform, in general.”
Per NRO , emphasis ours:
“Since 2010, conservative legislatures in Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota have passed major criminal-justice-reform packages. In 2007, Texas passed a reform package that avoided nearly $2 billion in prison construction costs by dedicating a far smaller amount to drug courts, electronic monitoring, and improved parole and probation monitoring of non-violent offenders. Six years later, Texas’s crime rate had reached its lowest point since 1968 , and the legislature had authorized three prison closures.”
The Wall Street Journal also notes that most of the reforms touted by Holder have been embraced by “budget-conscious conservatives” for years.
What do you think? Are conservatives merely trying to co-opt Eric Holder’s desire to reform the criminal justice system, or should he reach across the aisle for help among conservative state legislatures who have already experienced success with such reforms?
Either way, Holder only vaguely mentioned that he’d be asking the Justice Department and a “collection of law enforcement officials” to review disparities and recommend changes.