Cats and dogs living together ... mass hysteria!
(Washington, DC) – David Keene, former Chairman of the American Conservative Union, and Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, will join a group of bipartisan leaders April 7th to speak about the NAACP’s upcoming report, “Misplaced Priorities: Under Educate, Over Incarcerate”. The report examines escalating levels of prison spending and its impact on state budgets and our nation’s children. It uncovers a disturbing connection between high incarceration rates and poorly performing schools.
Misplaced Priorities tracks the steady shift of state funds away from education and toward the criminal justice system. For instance, in Houston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, more than 65 percent of the lowest-performing schools are in neighborhoods with the highest rates of incarceration. Researchers found that over-incarceration most impacts vulnerable, often minority populations, and that it destabilizes communities. The report offers recommendations that would help policymakers downsize prison populations and shift the savings to education budgets. Connecticut spends approximately 400,000 to incarcerate a juvenile offender per year vs. less than 12,000 a year to educate a young person.
The effort is part of the NAACP's “Smart and Safe Campaign,” an initiative designed to reform the nation's criminal justice system.
This is another encouraging sign that the right is shifting toward the abandonment of the old "tough on crime" paradigm for one that sees mass incarceration as a problem rather than a solution. As I've written before, though, an exclusively fiscal approach is one that can produce some very counterproductive impulses, such as putting offenders in debt in order to close budget gaps. All that does is encourage someone to seek illicit, and therefore untaxable, income.
Norquist, of course, has always been something of an apostate on the right when it comes to the people he's willing to make common cause with, but we'll see if it goes anywhere.
