Mass incarceration: it’s the classic cause of the liberal left. Said liberals might tell you, as Michelle Alexander does, that it is an entirely new form of racial caste system – in her words, “a new Jim Crow.” They might describe the disparate sentencing rates along racial lines – with one in six black men in prison, largely for non-violent drug crimes, despite drug use being equal across races. They might describe how we have become more punitive than at any other point in American history, with a prison population that has quadrupled since the beginning of the war on drugs in the 1970s. Indeed, mass incarceration is a tragedy for those trapped within it and a crisis point for the conscience of our nation. However, it may not be that these more liberal arguments for justice and equality will actually create change. Instead, it may quietly come from the economics and libertarian views of a new Republican party. Although we might have a Republican controlled Congress, this liberal cause might not go to the wayside altogether.
At the state level, Republicans are already taking action. In total, 29 states have made reforms to their mandatory sentencing laws to help reduce their prison populations – including many states with entirely Republican-controlled governments. The reasons for such changes are clear. State prisons host six times as many prisoners as federal prisons, and as such, bear the brunt of much of the cost of the prison system – and it is a high cost indeed. All in all, the Brookings Institute has found that prisons cost the government more than 80 billion dollars per year. The cost of the prison system, for instance, was what motivated Texas in 2007 to institute new reforms that increased the number of treatment facilities in the state to provide an alternative to prison. Arkansas, which also faced a growing prison population, has also severely limited its sentencing laws. Republicans like to lower taxes, and doing so will probably will required lowering prison spending.
Some national-level Republican politicians have also given this issue attention. Libertarians like Rand Paul, particularly, have cared about mass incarceration. Viewing it as an over-extension of the government to intervene so heavily in non-violent offenses, Paul sees mass incarceration as in conflict with his libertarian values. Even those republicans who do not agree with many of Paul’s libertarian policies do share a general fear of over-extension of government. And while Republicans are typically tough on crime, if imprisonment of non-violent offenders can be re-framed not as a problem of crime that threatens communities, but instead as an overreach of the state, it might fit into a larger republican ideal. After all, it seems inherently against most Republican policy to pay $30-60,000 dollars per year of taxpayer money to give a criminal free shelter and food. While this view of the system as part of a larger welfare state may be reductive, it could create a justification for change. Violent offenders would probably be left behind, but more than half of those in state prison are non-violent offenders, and so a huge proportion of the prison population could freed.
Similarly, national-level Republicans could be motivated by polls. First, America is simply not a punitive as we may think. A PEW survey found that 67% of people believe that drug users should be treated rather than prosecuted, and only 32% of people called reducing mandatory prison sentences a bad thing. As the Republican party tries to craft a 2016 candidate that can sway independents, polls like these matter. Additionally, while most discussion of mass incarceration has focused on black men, Hispanic communities are also heavily affected. Hispanics incarceration rates are twice as high as white incarceration rates. If this issue is framed as one that impacts Hispanic communities, which Republicans have often desperately tried to woo in this round of elections, then mass incarceration could be transformed to a national-level party issue.
Now, of course, there is still something to be said for the cost of all of this. If we reduce mass incarceration only because of the cost to the taxpayer, don’t we disregard the importance of inequality in our society? Don’t we fail to change the inherent racial biases? Don’t we fail to address the underlying problems? The answer, of course, is yes. After all, if we advocate policies that disregard the importance of government intervention, then it becomes extremely difficult to create greater job opportunity and reduce poverty in communities that continue to suffer the effects of historic policies like red-lining and school segregation. The reasons for mass incarceration are many, but most who study the issue would argue that it is a symptom of a larger problem of massive economic inequality. So, sure, if we take this approach we will not be able to address the fact that black median household wealth is still only 12% of white household wealth, or the fact that homicide rates are higher for black men and high school graduation rates are lower. But still, we might be able to reduce the cost of committing a drug crime and reduce the number of felons – increasing voter roles in poor communities and returning people to society without the trauma of prison or the stigma of a “felon” label on a job application. This won’t undo job discrimination, the possibility of addiction, or the lack of access to education. But it might be a small step in the right direction. We must ask ourselves, then, what is worth compromising on the quest to ending this grave injustice, and who we are willing to cooperate with along the way. If the goal, though, is simply to reduce the number of people in prison, the Republican victory on Tuesday is not necessarily a death knell of the cause.