Jacob Sullum on Chuck Grassley's Opposition to Sentencing Reform
Last week the newly created Coalition for Public Safety, a bipartisan, transideological campaign to reform the criminal justice system, made a big splash by bringing together political adversaries such as Koch Industries and the Center for American Progress. Notably absent from celebrations of this strange-bedfellows alliance: any mention of actual policy changes the coalition plans to pursue.
The lack of specifics, Jacob Sullum writes, was understandable but telling: While there seems to be broad agreement within the coalition about what should be done to "make our criminal justice system smarter, fairer, and more cost effective," the current Congress may settle for little more than lip service to those goals. Sullum says the problem can be summed up in two words: Chuck Grassley.