Pat Nolan strode to the podium and rattled off the facts: more than 2
million Americans are in prison, meaning one in every hundred adults is
incarcerated. Fewer than half of those in prison are there for violent
crimes; most are drug offenders; and state budgets are badly strained by
maintaining this system. Then he read a quote: “Only a nation that’s
rich and stupid would continue to pour billions into a system that
leaves prisoners unreformed, victims ignored and communities still
living in fear of crime.”
This wasn’t an ACLU convention nor an academic confab, however—it was
the Conservative Political Action Conference, the infamous annual
showcase of the far-right boundaries of the Republican Party. Just
before this panel on criminal justice reform began, former governor and
presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was onstage accusing President
Obama of lying about Benghazi and pronouncing that “the IRS is a
criminal enterprise.”
Read on...
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