Faith-Based Coalitions Prepare to Weigh in on Sentence
Reform in New Year
After the
past year, when the old political order was swept aside, traditional media
discredited, and government institutions under renewed scrutiny by a skeptical
electorate, we are not surprised that many organizations who failed to predict
all of these upheavals are once again missing the newest trend in 2017 sentence
relief hiding in plain sight. Many faith-based religious organizations, fresh
from providing difference-making grass-roots support to the winning
presidential candidate, are preparing to
take the lead in pressuring Congress to take action to reduce federal incarceration
and recidivism.
This process
has already begun on the state level, as state officials come to realize that
for-profit prisons and reentry facilities like halfway houses are just aren't
getting the job done. Expect the new administration to strongly consider
measures that get religious communities closely involved in the criminal
justice system.
The groundwork
has already been set. The new administration has big plans for reducing the
footprint of the federal agencies, none of which they are going to like. Put
into an office by voters tired of the old, wasteful way of doing the people's
business, they owe absolutely nothing to the federal bureaucracies, and there are no more opaque or inefficient
agencies than the BOP and the DOJ.
.The harsh
reality is that the previous administration, lauded by the media for its
many eloquent words supporting the concept
of sentence relief, failed to take advantage of the fact that a majority of
Congressmen and senators supported sentence relief. Yet, no sentence relief
bills were even called for a vote. Those
votes are still there, and ready for executive leadership on measures that have
broad bipartisan support, and support of an increasing number of religious
organizations.
In 2017, there will be an opportunity for faith-based groups of all denominations to
provide the leadership, initiative, and moral force to do their part to make sentence reform a reality, and thereafter accept the responsibility to do whatever is necessary to make it successful.
