Notable Left/Right morality accounting of the "Truth about Mass Incarceration"

Providing the cover feature piece for the September 21 issue of The National Review, Stephanos Bibas has this notable new commentary reflecting on the political rhetoric and statistical realities that surround modern crime and punishment in the United States.  The piece is headlined "Truth about Mass Incarceration," and I highly recommend the piece in full.  Here is an except from heart of the commentary, as well as its closing paragraph:

So the stock liberal charges against “mass incarceration” simply don’t hold water.  There is no racist conspiracy, nor are we locking everyone up and throwing away the key.  Most prisoners are guilty of violent or property crimes that no orderly society can excuse.  Even those convicted of drug crimes have often been implicated in violence, as well as promoting addiction that destroys neighborhoods and lives.

But just because liberals are wrong does not mean the status quo is right.  Conservatives cannot reflexively jump from critiquing the Left’s preferred narrative to defending our astronomical incarceration rate and permanent second-class status for ex-cons.  The criminal-justice system and prisons are big-government institutions.  They are often manipulated by special interests such as prison guards’ unions, and they consume huge shares of most states’ budgets.  And cities’ avarice tempts police to arrest and jail too many people in order to collect fines, fees, tickets, and the like.  As the Department of Justice found in its report following the Michael Brown shooting in Missouri, “Ferguson’s law enforcement practices are shaped by the City’s focus on revenue rather than by public safety needs.” That approach poisons the legitimacy of law enforcement, particularly in the eyes of poor and minority communities.

Conservatives also need to care more about ways to hold wrongdoers accountable while minimizing the damage punishment does to families and communities.  Punishment is coercion by the state, and it disrupts not only defendants’ lives but also their families and neighborhoods.  Contrary to the liberal critique, we need to punish and condemn crimes unequivocally, without excusing criminals or treating them as victims.  But we should be careful to do so in ways that reinforce rather than undercut conservative values, such as strengthening families and communities....

American criminal justice has drifted away from its moral roots. The Left has forgotten how to blame and punish, and too often the Right has forgotten how to forgive. Over-imprisonment is wrong, but not because wrongdoers are blameless victims of a white-supremacist conspiracy. It is wrong because state coercion excessively disrupts work, families, and communities, the building blocks of society, with too little benefit to show for it. Our strategies for deterring crime not only fail to work on short-sighted, impulsive criminals, but harden them into careerists. Criminals deserve punishment, but it is wise as well as humane to temper justice with mercy.