"A New Development in Prison Reform"

http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/01/a_new_development_in_prison_reform.html

In her blog post entitled “A New Development in Prison Reform” on Colorlines.com, Carla Murphy looks at current political efforts to move away from mass incarceration.  Julilly Kohler-Hausmann’s article “’The Atilla the Hun Law’: New York’s Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Making of a Punitive State” looks at how politicians were able to shape the public opinion by changing public policy.  There was an apparent shift in the dominant narrative surrounding the drug user from the 1950s to the 1970s, which got a huge push with Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s claims that drug users were the ultimate menace to society.   While incarceration rates since then have continued to rise, particularly for people of color, Murphy points to certain parts of the 2014 omnibus spending bill that could change that trend.  That is not to say that Republicans and Democrats have similar motivations and goals from lowering mass incarceration rates, but their different ideologies have led to this similar goal.  “…whether motivated by concern for civil liberties, unsustainable state and federal budgets, or a New Testament-inclination for giving second chances, one fact trumps all differences: The United States houses by far the largest incarcerated population in the world at 2.2 million people as of year-end 2011” (Murphy 2014).  In the omnibus spending bill, the Charles Colson Task Force will be created and it is said that it “will figure out fairer sentences – like, not locking people up for a decade because of a period of drug addiction.”  Also in the spending bill is more funding for the Second Chance Act which aims to rehabilitate.  While these are the goals of the Democrats, Republicans are championing this as a way to reduce government spending.  According to freelance journalist and Ph.D. student at John Hopkins, David Dagan, “…undoing mass incarceration is becoming as orthodox on the Right as building it was just a few short years ago.”  While it could be argued that Dagan may not be qualified to make a claim like that, the evidence is in the bipartisan efforts that are being made.  While the motivations behind this movement are different, this could be the start to a radical shift in the way the prison system works in the United States.