Making the case that "criminal justice reform is a conservative effort" and a "moral imperative"

The debate over modern criminal justice reform efforts creates an interesting divide among folks on the right: some like Bill Otis make the claim that the push for reform is an "ominous ... part of our country's recent pattern of decline and retreat," while others involved with the Right on Crime movement assert conservatives should be leading the charge for robust criminal justice reform.  Regular readers will not be surprised to hear I tend to be moved more by the Right on Crime voices, and the RoC website recently highlighted this notable column at Ricochet by Nathanael Ferguson making the claim that criminal justice reform is a conservative cause.  Here is how this piece starts and ends (with links in the original):

My friend Sean Kennedy asserts in a column at Real Clear Policy that the “Bipartisan Push for Criminal Justice Reform Is Misguided.” I respectfully disagree. On the contrary, criminal justice reform is a conservative effort that is necessary to restrain government that has grown too large, powerful, and costly.

Criminal justice reform, or CJR for short, is a broad-based movement made up of numerous policy reforms taking place mostly at the state level. Texas has pioneered many of the reforms and has inspired a growing number of states to follow suit which has led to, among other beneficial results, reduced recidivism rates and lower prison costs.

CJR is a policy response to the problem of overcriminalization which can be defined as the criminalization of routine behavior that has no business being criminalized and the overly burdensome punishments that are handed down for minor infractions. Or to put it another way, we have too many statutory and administrative laws that are too vague and carry overly disproportionate penalties in contravention to the old saying that “the punishment must fit the crime.”...

Conservatives are generally suspicious of government that is too big, too costly, and too powerful.  That is, until it comes to the justice system where we seem to think it’s okay for the government to be big and powerful and spend our tax dollars like a drunken sailor.  But why should we view the justice system any differently than the rest of the government? Why should we not demand transparency and accountability?  Why should we not demand that crime and punishment be proportional?  Why should we not demand that justice-related spending be efficient and cost-effective?

The answer is that we should demand these things.  And to a growing extent we are, which is why it is mostly conservative states with Republican governors leading the way on criminal justice reform and in so doing making the system more just and less costly to taxpayers.  To be sure, some liberal lawmakers who support the movement may tend to overreach and make the leap from being right on crime to being soft on crime.  But that’s no reason to condemn the entire movement.

Criminal justice reform is not some misguided liberal effort to open the prison doors and set free everyone convicted of drug-related crimes as some opponents charge; rather it is a moral imperative for a society that values limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, and a justice system that is fair to victims, violators, and the taxpayers who fund it.