"The Right Sentencing: Conservatives backtrack on long prison sentences"

The title of this post is the headline of this notable piece by Michael Barone via the National Review Online. Here are excerpts:

Conservatives in increasing numbers are moving away from their decades-long support for long prison terms for criminals. Last year, Newt Gingrich, William Bennett, and Reagan attorney general Edwin Meese endorsed a “right on crime” initiative, calling for rehabilitation measures rather than prison sentences for nonviolent offenders. They joined liberals who have been dismayed that America has just about the highest rate of incarceration of any nation in history.

There’s little question that the vast increase in prison populations from the lows of the 1960s to the highs of recent decades has resulted in reduced crime. Violent offenders who are locked up can’t attack people outside. But it’s also true that crime rates stayed high for a couple of decades after prison populations started their vast increases. Better police tactics, pioneered by Rudy Giuliani and William Bratton in New York City and adapted by many others, played a major role.

Meanwhile, laws requiring mandatory minimum sentences have resulted in lengthy terms for many who are likely to be no threat to society. This has led conservatives such as anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist to endorse the Families Against Mandatory Minimums organization. It seems particularly unfair to many conservatives, as well as to liberals, that judges must sentence people possessing small amounts of marijuana to five-year terms when states with medical-marijuana dispensaries have de facto legalized the substance.

Some conservatives have taken such stands after serving in prison themselves, including the late Charles Colson, founder of the Prison Fellowship, and Pat Nolan, a former Republican California legislator. Nolan points out that conservatives such as Texas governor Rick Perry have turned down proposals to build new prisons and have stepped up drug-treatment programs instead....

[T]here’s a strong case to be made that stringent anti-crime measures that were, after some years, effective at reducing crime are no longer necessary now that violent-crime rates have gone down. So just as facts have prompted liberals to abandon stricter gun control, facts seem to be persuading conservatives to abandon tough anti-crime laws they once championed.