From todays Los Angeles Times: Now that the drug-fueled crime wave that began in the 1960s and lasted through the early 1980s has abated, public opinion polls indicate that crime ranks well below the economy and other issues on the publics list of concerns. But mandatory-minimum prison sentences and other tough-on-crime measures passed during that era have led to a surge in prison populations in state and federal facilities, causing costs to skyrocket. There has been an 800% increase in the federal prison population in the last 30 years, gobbling up a third of the Justice Department budget. As a result of the growth, deficit hawks in the Republican Party began to rethink the issue. Nearly a third of the states, led by conservative Texas, have passed reforms to relax their sentencing laws in the past several years. At the same time, evangelical Christians, partly led by the prison ministries set up by Watergate felon Chuck Colson, are helping to make the once-discredited goal of prisoner rehabilitation popular with the religious right.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 20:00:01 +0000
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