The federal prison reform bill signed in 2017 was a bi-partisan clean up of antiquated sentencing laws and viewed as rational policy by both progs and cons when it was signed. Which is why you’ll not hear of it — shows that some things can get better even with the hot sewage government we have now...
I’m not certain what the conservative value is in keeping a 53 yo lady convicted of running a crack ring (her boyfriend was) in 1988 and serving a (ridiculous) life sentence for the “narcotics trafficking”.
“I’m not certain what the conservative value is in keeping a 53 yo lady convicted of running a crack ring (her boyfriend was) in 1988 and serving a (ridiculous) life sentence for the “narcotics trafficking”.”
Such people are not Conservatives, no matter what they call or believe about themselves. Conservatives favor conserving the ideals of this nation, which are all about maximizing liberty, ensuring equal treatment for all people and, in order to ensure that those goals are attained, about minimizing the power of government over both individuals and the citizenry as a whole.
These people worship order - which is to say, government control over people, whether they realize it or not, and whether they can even admit it to themselves or not. They are NOT “law and order” types, but just plain “order” types. “Law and order” necessarily includes the law end of things, which specifically includes numerous protections for the individual at the expense of order and government power, and a specific prohibition in our most basic statement of rights against “cruel and unusual punishment.” What ISN’T cruel or unusual about serving a life sentence for narcotics trafficking when there are at least somewhat reasonable doubts about whether she was even guilty in the first place? Murderers average 7 years in prison - when we catch them, which is 50% of the time or less - so where’s the decency and lack of cruelty when comparing that lady’s sentence to that of your average murderer?