The New York Times: Left and Right Agree on Criminal Justice: They Were Both Wrong Before

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The report, published Thursday by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, is a sequel to one published four years ago, in which the 2016 presidential candidates outlined their criminal justice platforms. The new essays, including those from eight Democratic candidates and Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to President Trump, show how profoundly the debate has changed.

“In 2015, our goal was to get all of these candidates on record simply saying the word that they were committed to reducing the prison population,” said Inimai M. Chettiar, who leads the center’s Justice Program and was an editor of the report. “Four years later, I think it is a very different landscape, where they are not only committing to ending mass incarceration but also coming forward with far bigger proposals and more specific proposals.”

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Three conservatives in the Brennan Center report — Mr. Holden, Mr. Kushner and Holly Harris, executive director of the Justice Action Network — emphasized the system’s fiscal inefficiency and tendency to preclude second chances, while liberals emphasized racial and economic justice. But the arguments generally led them to the same place.

It is not unusual for divisive issues to, gradually, become subjects of agreement. But the shift evident in the report is rarer: a wholesale reversal of bipartisan consensus.

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