OPINION:
“Patience and fortitude conquer all things”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The courage and the patience that so many justice reform advocates have shown in the effort to reform the federal criminal justice system has been rewarded as the U.S. Senate and House have passed and President Donald Trump has signed the First Step Act into law.
Efforts to reform the federal justice system have been years and even decades in the making. Organizations such as Prison Fellowship were working in Washington and in state capitals across the country in the 1980s and 1990s to educate government officials on better ways to administer justice.
Individuals such as Prison Fellowship Founder Chuck Colson and Pat Nolan of the American Conservative Union not only worked with elected officials to change draconian sentencing laws and improve prison programming to provide second chances to incarcerated citizens, but they also worked within federal and state prisons to help inmates turn their lives around.
Just over three years ago our organizations came together to push the federal government toward a conservative, smarter approach to crime by instituting more proportionate punishment for non-violent crimes, and to increase public safety by ensuring that released prisoners are returning to society without drug or alcohol addictions, and with the education and life skills to become productive members of their community.
In 2015 we wrote that the federal government should follow the lead of conservative red states who have effectively and efficiently reformed their prison and justice systems and now that goal will be achieved as the First Step Act becomes law.
As a result of these efforts and as a result of the work of justice reform champions in Congress such as Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, and the support of forward-thinking leaders such as Senate Judiciary Chairman Senator Chuck Grassley, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Sen. John Cornyn, federal justice reform is more than a concept it is a reality.
The election of President Donald Trump was a real game-changer in the fight for criminal justice reform. Along with President Trump’s support for reform, and specifically, his support for the First Step Act, presidential advisor Jared Kushner and his staff in the White House Office of American Innovation helped guide the legislation through Congress.
Now, through endless iterations of justice reform legislation, and thousands of meetings with members of the U.S. House and Senate and officials from multiple Presidential administrations, conservative justice reform advocates finally have a substantial federal policy victory.
The First Step Act promotes public safety and provides inmates access to the transformational programming they need to earn back the public’s trust and to return home as good spouses, parents and neighbors by giving credits for an earlier release for inmates who enroll in job training, faith, and drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs. Conservative-leaning states such as Texas and Georgia enacted such programs, and as we argued in 2015, are proven to reduce recidivism and provide inmates with the life skills they need to succeed on the outside.
The First Step Act is the most critical federal justice system reform since 2010, and everyone who contributed to its passage deserves congratulations and credit for legislation that will indeed change thousands of lives for the better.
However, this is no victory lap. Passage of the First Step Act is a monumental accomplishment, but as the name implies, it is merely the first step on a path to smarter, more effective federal sentencing and prison programming policies.
• Tim Head is executive director of the Faith & Freedom Coalition. Grover Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform.
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