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Left and Right Agree on Criminal Justice: They Were Both Wrong Before [1]

['Maggie Astor']

Date: 2019-05-16

One contributor to a new report on American criminal justice called the current system “an affront to our most fundamental values of freedom, equality and liberty,” then suggested sentencing fewer people to prison, sealing nonviolent criminal records and restoring voting rights for released offenders.

Another wrote, “To endlessly punish those who have paid their debt to society is simply immoral,” then suggested, well, sentencing fewer people to prison, sealing nonviolent criminal records and restoring voting rights for released offenders.

If the messages were similar, the messengers were far from it. The first was Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, a Democratic candidate for president. The second was Mark Holden, a senior vice president of the company owned by Charles G. and David H. Koch, who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting conservative causes.

And if the report showed one thing, it was this: There is a new bipartisan consensus on criminal justice, and it is that the old consensus was wrong.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/16/us/politics/criminal-justice-system.html

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