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On Wednesday, Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist and FreedomWorks President and CEO Adam Brandon released an op-ed in the Washington Examiner discussing the past week’s developments on congressional criminal justice reform.

Several notable tough-on-crime organizations endorsed the Senate’s Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act (SRCA) this past week: The International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Major County Sheriffs’ Association, Concerned Veterans of America, and the National District Attorneys Association.

These endorsements come at a time when criminal justice reform is becoming more relevant in the Senate after months of negotiations with policymakers and stakeholders.

Furthermore, Norquist and Brandon stated,

“The problem with our current excessive sentences for lower-level offenders is simple: Rather than deter crime, they create more crime, according to the best research we have.

America is not opening the cell doors. More like giving judges and prosecutors a carrot to get the cooperation of lower-level offenders and be better prepared to go after the Pablo Escobars of the world…

The Senate’s bill would implement recidivism-reduction programming similar to that established in numerous red states to make sure the people leaving prison stay out of prison. Prisoners are encouraged to participate by allowing them to earn time credits that they can use to spend a specific portion of their sentence in either home confinement or community supervision.

That means that after successfully reducing their likelihood of committing more crimes, inmates are then transferred to other forms of supervision where they will take up fewer public resources and have an easier time reintegrating as productive members of society.

These reforms put inmates to work. That isn’t being soft on crime. America is getting ready to get even tougher on it.

Little wonder that the conservatives that first came up with these reforms in the states won election after election. So much so that they didn’t stop at one round of reforms: Texas is still passing reforms after starting nearly 10 years ago, only now it’s doing so with the lowest crime rates since 1968.

There are important conservative priorities being pursued in Congress, and justice reform is one of them. The naysayers are becoming ever fewer and more isolated.”

To read the entire editorial, click here