Editorial: Voice for Broken Prisons

Virginia senator points to statistics in saying reforms are long overdue

Sen. Jim Webb is a decorated Marine and former Navy secretary under President Ronald Reagan. He will need the kind of determination and mental toughness stressed in the military to shepherd through Congress a bill addressing his long-standing passion — prison reform.

Even officials in his own state of Virginia say he is in for a tough fight on the issue of prisons, which most politicians use to stress their law-and-order, tough-on-crime credentials, as in “lock ’em up and throw away the key.”

A Virginia state senator who is running for attorney general told The Washington Post that Webb is “more emotion than brain” on this issue. A political science professor at Virginia Commonwealth University told the newspaper Webb “clearly has limited interest in the political art, you might say, of reelection.”

Yet Webb, a Democrat whose election two years ago was credited in part to his early opposition to the Iraq war, has supporters who say his independent streak will attract voters in this time of political change.

In listening to Webb speak on this issue, it is hard to argue with that belief. The senator points to the 2.3 million people imprisoned in the United States. He told the Post that although our country has only 5 percent of the world’s population, it has 25 percent of its prison population.

Webb also emphasizes that although blacks make up 13 percent of the population, they account for more than 50 percent of all prison inmates.

“I think you can be a law-and-order leader and still understand that the criminal justice system as we understand it today is broken and unfair, locking up the wrong people in many cases and not locking up the right person in many cases,” Webb told the Post.

By spring, Webb says, he will have introduced legislation that would create a national commission to study prisons and recommend major reforms.

We are pleased that advocates for long overdue prison reform now have a strong ally in Congress.

http://www.lasvegassol.com/news/2009/jan/03/voice-broken-prisons/