Criminal justice advocates have done an impressive job amassing a broad coalition to support initiatives to curb mass incarceration. Their next challenge? Keeping it together as the 2016 race picks up and candidates are tempted to revert to “tough on crime” rhetoric to attack their opponents.
Already, some conservatives are flirting with the old “Willie Horton”-style politics, invoking racially-charged crime fears. While Donald Trump is often blamed for raising the temperature on crime, even lawmakers who previously have aligned themselves with the movement to overhaul the country’s prison system have backed off from some of the efforts.
The criminal justice reform movement is doing everything it can to counter claims that easing mandatory minimums and other reform proposals will bring back the crime waves that roiled the ‘80s and ‘90s, and contributed to mass incarceration policies in the first place. They believe this time, with more data and vocal supporters across the political spectrum, the crime scare tactics won’t be as salient was they once were.
“I don’t think we are in the same political climate as the Willie Horton [moment] was. I think enough people recognize that we’ve passed that tipping point and the system is broken,” Jessica Jackson, the national director of #Cut50, told TPM. The goal of #Cut50 is to reduce the prison population by 50 percent in 10 years.
That has not stopped some lawmakers — even those who previously called themselves reformers — from falling into old traps, which could disrupt the tenuous left-right consensus around the issue.
Take for instance New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Even while bragging about New Jersey’s success with reform initiatives, Christie did everything to undermine President Obama’s recent trip to New Jersey to champion the justice reform effort there. He accused the president of being “pushed to this by others.”
Christie declared the day of Obama’s visit Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, citing the “really negative nature of what’s been going on with law enforcement across the country on the president’s watch.” Christie insisted the timing of the day was coincidental, even though it was announced not long after the president’s plans to travel there were made public.
“There is a delicate balance when the president gets involved, because, for whatever reason, partisan politics become amplified every time the president steps out on an issue,” Jackson said, even as some of the movement’s biggest champions are leaders from red states. “The president suddenly making this a legacy issue does put some risk to people starting to say, ‘I don’t want to be seen as doing this with the president.’”
White House spokesman Josh Earnest, meanwhile, suggested Christie’s low polling might have motivated his actions and they were “part of his strategy for turning that around.”
But 2016 presidential hopefuls with more formidable campaigns are also invoking fears of a crime wave when opposing reform initiatives. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) — who is setting himself up to be the conservative alternative in the GOP presidential primary — notably voted against a major criminal justice reform package in the Senate Judiciary Committee, when months ago he positioned himself as a supporter of the movement. During the mark-up, he suggested that the bill would release thousands of violent criminals poised to commit more crimes.
“We know to an absolute certainty that an unfortunate number of those offenders will go commit subsequent crimes and everyone of us who releases violent criminals from prison prior to the expiration of their sentence can fully expect to be held accountable by our constituents,” Cruz said during last month’s committee hearing.
The claim earned the rebuke of both No. 2 Senate Republican John Cornyn (R-TX) and even Cruz’s oft-ally Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who called the characterization “simply incorrect.”
A representative for the Koch brothers — who are ginning up support for criminal justice reform on the right — also decried Cruz’s opposition.
“We are disappointed that some [Senate Judiciary] members, including Sen. Cruz, who have supported the need for reform and been strong supporters of the Bill of Rights, did not support this bill,” Koch Industries senior vice president and general counsel Mark Holden said in a statement soon after the vote.
The statement “sent shockwaves through the entire conservative community,” said Holly Harris, the executive director of the U.S. Justice Action Network, which is lobbying for justice reform from the right.
Harris told TPM to expect more conservative groups to be willing to follow in the Kochs’ footsteps in calling out lawmakers who backtrack on reform promises.
Even the Koch brothers have been accused to playing both sides of the issue. Koch money has gone to super PACs that have funded ads that have celebrated judges for handing out harsh sentences as well as to candidates who have called criminal justice reform initiatives “dangerous,” a report by The Intercept revealed.
The Koch network’s support for the candidates may have to do with non-justice related issues, like class action lawsuits, Matthew Menendez, counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, noted to The Intercept. But the tough-on-crime rhetoric sells better in an ad, he said. “The collateral damage is to criminal justice reform,” he said.
Justice reform activists acknowledge that things can get “complicated” for allies like the Kochs when the issue is pitted against other conservative priorities.
“That is what will complicate things for us moving forward. Thus far we’ve been able to be very pure and honest with each other,” Harris said.
The threat of election-season politicking is part of the reason advocates are rushing to push federal legislation to the president’s desk in the next few months, even if the bills Congress currently is considering don’t go as far as activists like.
“Party politics as they are start getting so heated up anyway, it’s going to be a lot of work to hold together this coalition,” Jackson said.
