June 29, 2015 Issue

Prison Revolt: A former law-and-order conservative takes a lead on criminal-justice reform.

By Bill Keller

Patrick J. Nolan’s own experience led him to challenge decades of conservative policy.

Illustration by Stanley Chow

n the mid-nineteen-eighties, shortly after the convictions of six members of the House of Representatives and one senator in the IF.B.I. bribery sting code-named Abscam, one of the bureau’s anticorruption units turned its attention to the California legislature, where an informant had reported that lawmakers were on the take. Agents posing as representatives of a shrimp-processing company announced plans to build a plant near Sacramento, provided that a state-loan guarantee could be procured. They offered to reward legislators who would help secure their financing. The operation, inevitably, was known as Shrimpscam. Patrick J. Nolan, an earnest law-and-order conservative representing Glendale and Burbank, was the leader of the Republican minority in the assembly. He had already voted for a bill making the company eligible for the guarantee, but Governor George Deukmejian, who was aware of the sting, had vetoed it. Now one of the agents wanted to meet Nolan to entice him to intercede with Deukmejian. On June 29, 1988, Nolan and a legislative aide, Karin Watson, arrived at a bugged suite in the Sacramento Hyatt Regency, across from the Capitol. They declined the agent’s offer of champagne (it was not yet noon) in favor of Diet Pepsi, admired the view, engaged in some awkward small talk, and left twenty minutes later, with two five-thousand-dollar checks. One was made out to a Republican campaign committee. The other was left blank, apparently to see if Nolan would pocket the money. He filled in the name of a Party PAC.

Pat Nolan now lives outside today like an outtake from “Ameri- a dozen indictments, but it took five Washington, D.C., in Leesburg, can Hustle,” is explicitly trans- years, and Karin Watson’s coöper- Virginia. Recently, he rummaged in actional, but the agent presses for ation, for prosecutors to file charges his basement for a copy of the F.B.I. help in changing the Governor’s against Nolan. On April 27, 1993, audiotape of the meeting. (There mind, and Nolan explains that it he was indicted on six counts, in- was a video, but Nolan’s copy would be beneficial for business in cluding racketeering, conspiracy, seems to have got lost when he general if Republicans could capture extortion, and money laundering. moved east, in 1996.) Nothing on a majority in the assembly. Nolan insists that he voted for the the muddy soundtrack, which plays The sting eventually resulted in loan because the fictional venture promised jobs, and that he took the twice as likely. More than forty per ing education and job training in contributions because that’s how cent of released offenders return to prisons; allowing prisoners time off people help elect legislators who see prison within three years. for rehabilitation; and easing the things their way. But Nolan’s law- Several Republican Presidential reëntry of those who have served yers concluded that a public that had candidates—Rand Paul, , time by expunging some criminal recently endured the scandals of , and Ted Cruz—have records and by lowering barriers to Watergate, Abscam, and been embraced by Right on Crime, employment, education, and hous- Iran-Contra would not be sympa- a campaign to promote “successful, ing. As David Dagan and Steven M. thetic to a politician’s claim that he conservative solutions” to the puni- Teles write, in the Annals of the was just doing his job. Nolan calcu- tive excesses of American law and American Academy of Political and lated that, if found guilty, he could order. In February, the American Social Science, “Retrenching the be in prison until his young children Conservative Union’s Conservative carceral state is becoming as ortho- were in their twenties. So he quit his Political Action Conference, which dox on the Right as building it was seat and admitted to one felony serves as an audition for right-wing just a few short years ago.” They count of racketeering in exchange Presidential aspirants, featured three conclude that this has created a for a sentence of thirty-three month- panels on criminal-justice reform, “Nixon goes to ” opportunity s. including one called Prosecutors to reverse decades of overkill. Criminal-justice reformers like Gone Wild. Bernard Kerik, who was This conservative transforma- to say that if a conservative is a Rudolph Giuliani’s police commis- tion is often portrayed in the media liberal who has been mugged, a sioner and served three years in as a novelty, and some progressives liberal is a conservative who has prison for tax fraud and other regard it as a ploy to cut taxes and served time. Nolan did not emerge crimes, now promotes an agenda of turn prisons over to the private cor- from prison any less conservative, reforms, including voting rights for rections industry. Yet it has deep but he says he experienced a pro- ex-felons. The libertarian billion- roots and a tangle of motives, one of found disillusionment, which has aires Charles and David Koch are which is indeed a belief that down- led him to play a central role in a donating money to the National sizing prisons promises taxpayers cause that is only now finding its Association of Criminal Defense some relief. (Locking up an inmate moment. These days, it is hard to Lawyers, to help insure that indigent for a year can cost as much as tui- ignore a rising conservative clamor defendants get competent legal rep- tion at a good college.) But for to rehabilitate the criminal-justice resentation, and they are many conservatives, Nolan says, system. Conservatives are as quick co-sponsoring conferences on judi- reducing spending is “ancillary.” as liberals to note that the United cial reform with the American Civil “It’s human dignity that really moti- States, a country with less than five Liberties Union. vates us.” per cent of the world’s population, In Congress and the states, con- In September, I met Nolan in houses nearly twenty-five per cent servatives and liberals have found Washington, D.C., at a German deli of the world’s prisoners. Some 2.2 common ground on such issues as downstairs from his office at the million Americans are now incar- cutting back mandatory-minimum American Conservative Union cerated—about triple the number sentences; using probation, treat- Foundation, where he is the director locked up in the nineteen-eighties, ment, and community service as of the new Center for Criminal Jus- when, in a panic over drugs and alternatives to prison for low-level tice Reform. At sixty-five, he is tall urban crime, conservative legislators crimes; raising the age of juve- and rotund, with a round, amiable demanded tougher policies, and nile-court jurisdictions; limiting face and a thatch of gray-white hair. liberals who feared being portrayed solitary confinement; curtailing the Since 2011, he has suffered from as weak went along with them. Afri- practice of confiscating assets; re- restricted lung capacity, complicated can-Americans are nearly six times writing the rules of probation and by a lingering case of Lyme disease, as likely as whites to be incarcer- parole to avoid sending offenders and he uses a portable oxygen tank. ated, and Latinos are more than back to jail on technicalities; restor- But he still works full time, tracking

Page -2- the progress of reforms state by widely viewed as a potential speaker By the standards of American state, drafting op-eds for fel- of the assembly, even a plausible incarceration, Nolan had it easy. He low-conservatives, planning confer- candidate for governor or for the served twenty-five months in two ences, rallying state legislators by Senate. prisons that housed the least menac- phone, and firing off volleys on “I went to the legislature very ing felons. The Federal Prison Camp Twitter. pro cop and with a get-tough-on- at Dublin, near San Francisco, was a There are two main styles of crime attitude,” Nolan told me. He compound of former Army barracks Southern California Republicanism: wanted to reinstate the death pen- surrounded by landscaped flower the home-spun anecdotal optimism alty, which the Supreme Court had gardens. There was a small coterie of Ronald Reagan and the uneasy temporarily suspended. He believed of white-collar criminals, but the conspiratorial resentment of Richard that the exclusionary rule, which majority of the inmates were blacks Nixon. Nolan is in the Reagan mold, disallows evidence improperly ob- and Latinos serving time for rela- upbeat and engaging even when he tained by the police, had become a tively minor drug convictions. is describing what he regards as the loophole that lawyers exploited to Nolan helped organize reli- transformative injustice of his life. allow guilty clients to go free. He gious-study groups, and—to judge He grew up on Crenshaw Boulevard excoriated a colleague in the assem- by his accounts in an unpublished in Los Angeles; his father was an bly for proposing a law that would memoir—he treated his fel- accountant, and his mother, he said, extend workers’ compensation to low-inmates as a constituency to be “majored in raising kids”—nine of inmates injured in prison labor pro- charmed. (He still corresponds with them. By the time he was old grams. And he was a leading spon- some of them.) From prison, Nolan enough to have a paper route, the sor of a prison-building boom in the produced a chatty newsletter that his integrated middle-class neighbor- state, which included, to his even- wife, Gail, distributed to some two hood had turned rough. The family tual regret, the Pelican Bay superm- thousand supporters. He had regular was devoutly Catholic, and Nolan ax facility, where inmates are kept visits from his family and a loyal remains so. in long-term solitary. band of political friends. After ten At Notre Dame High School, he The F.B.I. sting, he says, dis- months, he was transferred to Gei- joined the Young Americans for pelled his unconditional faith in law ger Corrections Center, near Spo- Freedom—he and his friends liked enforcement. In Nolan’s telling of it, kane, where the supervision was to heckle Jane Fonda at anti-Viet- trophy-hunting agents browbeat his even less oppressive. Still, his time nam War rallies, chanting, aides and his campaign supporters in prison exposed him to what he “Barbarella bombed, why can’t to build a case against him, leaking came to see as the cynical cycle of Nixon?”—and in 1966 he was a tidbits to the press in the hope of American justice: sweep up young volunteer for Reagan’s first guber- breaking his resolve. The prosecutor men, mostly from broken families in natorial campaign. He tried three loaded the charge sheet so heavily underprivileged neighborhoods, put times to enlist in the Marine offi- that Nolan concluded that he could- them away for a while, send them cer-training program, but each time n’t risk going before a jury. Like back onto the streets with no skills, he failed the physical, owing to a roughly ninety-five per cent of peo- and repeat. To call this a “correc- knee injury suffered when a car ple convicted in America, he plead- tions” system seemed a sour joke. knocked him off his bike on his ed guilty and took a lesser sentence “I had assumed they did all they delivery route. After graduating rather than take his chances at trial. could to help prepare the guys to from the University of Southern He began to wonder how many of return to society and make a better California and then its law school, the people he had dismissed as bad life,” Nolan told me. “But they were he represented white-collar defen- guys had simply succumbed to pros- just warehousing them.” There was dants in civil cases for a few years, ecutorial bullying. He said, “I saw a pervasive sense of defeat. “The served part time as a reserve deputy that the F.B.I. and the government implication is: you’re worthless, you sheriff, and went into politics. By prosecutors weren’t interested in the come from nothing, you are nothing, the time of Shrimpscam, he was truth, and that was a shock to me.” you’ll never be anything.” He added

Page -3- that when prisoners were released “The kid on the bunk above me was Nolan realized that a grassroots the guards would say, “See you in a doing ten years for crack,” Nolan network was already in place: fifty few months.” He was surprised, too, told me. “There’s essentially no dif- thousand Prison Fellowship volun- at the number of elderly and infirm ference” between the two forms of teers and a couple of hundred thou- inmates. In his memoir, he wrote the drug, he said, “but so many sand donors. that “incarcerating people who blacks were doing absurdly long Their first test came later that aren’t a physical threat to society is sentences for crack.” Nolan says year, with a proposal moving expensive and counter-produc-tive” that he helped line up support from through Congress that would have —something that “only a nation that thirty-four Republican members of sharply limited the right of inmates is rich and vindictive” would do. the House, but lost half of them to file lawsuits under the First Nolan was still an inmate when when Clinton’s Attorney General, Amendment. Many prosecutors he ventured into the politics of re- Janet Reno, endorsed the harsher favored the measure as a way to form. In 1994, in the California punishments. “How could they let curb nuisance lawsuits, but Nolan Political Review, he published an Janet Reno get to their right on drug argued that it would also inhibit attack on that year’s crime bill — policy?” he asked. legitimate religious freedom. President Clinton’s signature contri- Unlike most parolees, Nolan had “You’d get some inmate suing for bution to mass incarceration, which a job waiting for him. Charles Col- steak dinners on the grounds that he earmarked $9.7 billion for prisons, son, a Nixon White House aide who belonged to the Church of Filet Mig- imposed tougher sentences, and, had become a devout Evangelical non,” he said. “But you also had among many punitive provisions, Christian shortly before serving wardens who wouldn’t serve kosher eliminated college grants for prison seven months in a federal prison for meals to Orthodox Jews.” Crosses inmates. Many Republicans turned his part in the , that Latino prisoners fashioned from against the bill, because it also in- had organized the Prison Fellow- plastic trash bags were banned in cluded a ban on assault rifles and ship, a network of volunteers who some prisons as “gang attire.” Nolan funded remedial inner-city pro- visited inmates and promoted faith and Colson asked their network to grams, such as “midnight basket- as a path back into society’s good contact their legislators and raise the ball.” Nolan’s objections were dif- graces. When the volunteers re- issue at town-hall meetings. Nolan ferent: he argued that the bill would ported appalling conditions and a organized a press conference in bring profits to the prison industry permeating sense of hopelessness in which a Republican and a Demo- but do little to reduce crime. He the prisons, Colson decided to laun- crat—Senators John Ashcroft and wrote, “Above all, conservatives ch a political offshoot, called the Edward Kennedy—defended the should ask themselves how likely it Justice Fellowship. The idea was to rights of inmates. The proposal died. is that these bloated bureaucracies build a grassroots campaign to Next, Nolan sought to enlist the will turn out to be any less rapa- lobby Congress and state lawmakers fellowship in the campaign against cious, irresponsible, or concerned for more humane treatment of in- prison rape. Studies showed that as with the rights of ordinary Ameri- mates during and after incarceration, many as one inmate in five was the cans than, say, the IRS, just because but Colson was so busy running the victim of sexual assault, by another they are packaged and marketed evangelical network that the effort inmate or by prison staff. Such at- under the dishonest label ‘tough on languished. Colson had heard of tacks, when inmates dared to report crime.’ ” Nolan through mutual Republican them, were dismissed as a hazard of The following year, when Con- friends, who portrayed him as equal- incarceration. “Prison rape was a gress was reviewing the hun- ly at ease talking about God and secular issue, but with moral over- dred-to-one disparity in the penal- dealing with politicians. So in the tones,” Nolan told me. The ties for crack versus powder co- spring of 1996, as Nolan was pre- direct-mail firm that handled Col- caine, Nolan used his phone privi- paring to leave prison, Colson asked son’s fund-raising “didn’t want to leges to urge Republican representa- him to move to Washington and run touch the issue,” he said. “They tives to treat the two drugs equally. the Justice Fellowship. Once there, thought, Oh, it makes people un-

Page -4- comfortable. It’ll turn people off.” the most part a classic law-and-ord- told me. But the volunteers agreed to rally er conservative, faulted the system One place where conservative conservative support, and, in con- for failing to provide indigent defen- interests coalesced was the junction with human-rights organi- dants access to adequate legal coun- Public Policy Foundation, a zations and liberal groups, they sel and opposed the reclassification free-market think tank based in Aus- helped secure the unanimous pas- of minor regulatory violations as tin, which helped convert then Gov- sage of the Prison Rape Elimination felonies. (A favorite conservative ernor Rick Perry from an indiscrimi- Act, in 2003. Nolan is the first to talking point is that Texas has elev- nate law-and-order enthusiast to a admit that the law hasn’t come close en felonies related to the harvesting self-styled apostle of pragmatic to eliminating the problem. But it of oysters.) Former House Speaker reform. In 2007, Perry joined re- did make the Justice Fellowship a , a co-author of the formers in the state legislature in a force for reform beyond issues of 1994 Contract with America, with plan to cancel a major expansion of strictly religious interest. Its mem- its unforgiving anticrime provisions, the state’s prisons and redirect some bers subsequently helped on the told me that he was persuaded to of the savings to addiction treatment passage of the Second Chance Act, embrace reform because of the high for low-level drug offenders, as an which provides federal grants to recidivism rates. “It’s just stun- alternative to incarceration. The help released convicts reënter soci- ningly stupid to have a system that prison population dropped suffi- ety, and the Fair Sentencing Act, keeps returning people to jail,” he ciently that Texas closed one facility which reduced the disparity—to told me. in 2011 and two more in 2013. eighteen to one—between sentences After George W. Bush was The feat was less impressive for crack and powder cocaine. reelected, in 2004, and the Republi- than it seemed. When Perry became During those years, Nolan dis- can majorities in Congress were governor, in 2000, he inherited the covered a number of prominent strengthened, Nolan attended a sem- largest and fastest-growing prison right-wing figures who had come to inar in Richmond, Virginia, where population in the country, the legacy support criminal-justice reform from conservatives debated what to do of a prison-building program under various directions. Some, like David with their consolidated power. his predecessors Ann Richards and Keene, the former president of the Norquist and Keene separately George W. Bush. The state could National Rifle Association, whose urged him to pull together the fac- easily afford to release hundreds of son was sentenced to ten years for a tions of conservatism on justice minor offenders without risking a road-rage shooting, were, like Cols- reform. So he began hosting occa- spike in crime. Still, Perry’s exam- on and Nolan himself, influenced by sional off-the-record lunches where ple was one that Nolan and others personal experience. Grover Nor- you might have seen libertarians could hold out to politicians who quist, an activist famous for extract- from the Cato Institute, advocates of worried about being pilloried as soft ing no-new-taxes pledges from judicial restraint from the Federalist on crime. Vikrant Reddy, a former members of Congress, was attracted Society, social conservatives from Texas Public Policy Foundation to the issue partly by the odor of the , and lawyer who is now a crimi- wasted tax money, and became an hard-core fiscal conservatives like nal-justice fellow at a think tank early Nolan ally. Richard Viguerie, Norquist. Attendees found a unify- backed by Charles Koch, said, “This who refined direct-mail fund-raising ing theme in the arrogance and the is the ultimate hang-’em-high state. in the service of the far right, also overreach of government and the If you say you’ve done these im- came to the campaign early, on toll that it took on individual free- pressive things on prison reform in moral grounds. (A substantial mi- dom and responsibility. Nolan be- Vermont, nobody’s really listening. nority on the right, notably Cath- came, mostly behind the scenes, a If you say they did it in Texas, then olics, have turned against capital trusted broker, strategist, theoreti- you have a captive audience.” punishment. Nolan and Viguerie are cian, fund-raiser, diplomat, and The next step was to replicate among them.) , Presi- whip. “If Pat says something, it’s the Texas story in other states. Marc dent Reagan’s Attorney General, for kind of the final word,” Viguerie Levin, a conservative lawyer who

Page -5- headed the Texas foundation’s jus- they diverge on the question of its Alexander told me that during tice-reform operation, came up with causes. The view of many on the left the five years that she has been trav- a catchy name — Right on Crime — is distilled to its essence by the legal elling around the country talking for a new advocacy group set up out scholar Michelle Alexander in her about her book she has often found of the foundation in 2010 to share best-selling 2010 book, “The New conservatives “more advanced in policy ideas and mobilize prominent Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the their thinking” than liberal politi- conservatives for reform. Levin and Age of Colorblindness.” Alexander cians, who, after many years of hav- Nolan realized that, instead of build- posited that the criminal-justice ing to play tough for voters, “have ing a new coalition of name-brand system as it exists today is the prod- become comfortable with the crimi- conservatives for each battle, they uct of the country’s economic and nal-justice system as it is.” Reli- could get supporters to sign on to a racial history. gious conservatives in particular, statement of principles — transpar- The fact that nearly a third of she said, “really appreciate the ency and accountability, individual black men in this country are des- moral and spiritual dimensions of liberty, cost-effectiveness, a chance tined to spend time in jail or prison, mass incarceration.” for rehabilitation, limited govern- Alexander argued, cannot be ex- As a theory of how we got to ment, a voice for crime victims, a plained as simply a society defend- this point, Alexander’s view sup- preference for solutions based on ing itself against urban predators. In plies a powerful logic but is of little family and community. That way, her view, Nixon’s tough-on-crime comfort to advocates of piecemeal the signatories’ names could be agenda and Reagan’s escalation of reforms, which she regards as “ut- invoked without having to ask for the were aimed, con- terly insufficient.” She told me, permission every time. sciously or not, at halting the ad- “Some people who might have spent “Sort of like Henry Ford invent- vances of the civil-rights movement more than a decade behind bars may ing the assembly line, it allowed us and perpetuating the neglect of the spend only a few years. Children to handle a large number of issues,” underclass. While race has influ- who might not otherwise have ever Nolan said. Variations on the Texas enced the administration of justice known their parents may have a shot approach to reducing the prison in this country from its beginning, at having relationships with their population have since been adopted she says, since the nineteen-eighties mother or father, and people may in Georgia, South Carolina, Ohio, mass incarceration has decimated receive additional support—job Kentucky, and Mississippi. “You minority neighborhoods to the ex- training or education.” However, now have all these conservative and tent that it has become a malign she added, “I’m deeply concerned liberal governors touching what form of containment. “It is no longer that many people will mistake these used to be a third rail,” said John concerned primarily with the pre- reforms for the kind of cultural and Malcolm, a former prosecutor who vention and punishment of crime, institutional transformation that is oversees the Edwin Meese III Cen- but rather with the management and necessary.” The current bipartisan ter for Legal and Judicial Studies, at control of the dispossessed,” she ferment might improve a few lives, the Heritage Foundation. Last year wrote. On many days, the news she conceded, but repairing criminal in California, Right on Crime, with seems to provide evidence for Alex- justice requires “a radical restructur- financing from B. Wayne Hughes, ander’s case: racial profiling; ing of our society,” potentially Jr., the son of a storage-locker bil- stop-and-frisk; the targeted prosecu- driven by “third parties and new lionaire, and with Nolan working tion of drug laws in black and political formations” rather than by the phones to legislators in his home brown communities; the dispropor- Republicans or Democrats. She told state, provided support for Proposi- tionate arrest, remand, and sentenc- me, “I’m not enlisting the very peo- tion 47, which downgraded minor ing of minorities; the xenophobic ple who constructed the system to drug and property crimes to misde- alarm about immigration; and the take charge of now reforming it.” meanors. It passed in November. quick resort to force by police and “Michelle Alexander has gotten Although right and left generally corrections officers against citizens a lot of publicity, and a lot of people agree on the scale of the problem, of color. have been attracted by it,” Nolan

Page -6- said. “But I think it’s counterpro- Clinton can expect to be attacked for the next ten years. (Nolan is listed as ductive to go and start off by punch- her husband’s tough-on-crime a partner on the group’s Web site, ing people in the face, saying, expedience—from the right.) although he says that thirty per cent ‘You’re part of the white slave-ma- The year that Clinton signed that is a more realistic goal.) To accom- ster mentality that has done this.’” bill, thirty-seven per cent of Ameri- plish such a drastic cut, Booker On the right, the excesses of the cans identified crime as the nation’s suggested, would entail releasing system are most often explained as most important problem. By 2012, not only pot smokers and shoplifters the result of too much government the number was two per cent. The but also people guilty of more seri- coddling and a breakdown of fami- crime rate has plateaued at its lowest ous crimes. He invited the audience lies, resulting in a surge of crime level in decades, a development to talk about reëxamining some and a corresponding rise in public variously attributed to the ebbing of offenses now categorized as violent. alarm. The war on drugs and the the crack epidemic, an improved Nobody seemed inclined to take him ensuing explosion of the prison economy, smarter policing, the ag- up on the offer. population, many conservatives ing of the baby boomers, and, at There are whole areas of policy argue, were not acts of racism but huge expense, mass incarceration. A where bipartisan consensus remains responses to legitimate fears. But new generation has come of age in far out of reach. Guns, for starters, Nolan says, “Our rhetoric helped safer cities, and now Democratic are untouchable. (Norquist likes to grow the climate in which the gov- officials who dared not endorse less provoke liberals with the creative ernment could overreach. Prison punitive approaches to crime have theory that the crime rate has fallen became the default choice when it conservatives to give them political because more Americans have con- should be the last resort. I guess I’m cover. “What I tell conservatives is cealed-carry permits.) For most somewhat defensive, because a lot liberals cannot lead on reforming Republicans, outright legalization of of liberals say that this is a way of the criminal-justice system,” drugs, even marijuana, “is one we making up for the wrong things we Viguerie told me. “And so, if con- can’t touch,” Nolan says. The idea did. I think that both hands were on servatives don’t lead, nothing hap- of restoring voting rights to the knife.” pens.” ex-felons, which has the support of Nixon and Reagan—and the There is a tendency, on both Rand Paul and Nolan as well as 1988 campaign of George H. W. sides, to make ending mass incarcer- Bernie Kerik, appeals to many Dem- Bush, with the infamous Willie Hor- ation seem easier than it is. In ocrats but terrifies most Republi- ton TV ad—tapped a vein of white March, I went to Washington for the cans. “They have this image of anxiety, but liberals were co-archi- Bipartisan Summit on Criminal hordes of criminals” flocking to the tects of the current situation. The Justice Reform, hosted by the liberal polls to vote for Democrats, Nolan “war on drugs” had no more outspo- activist Van Jones, the Democratic said. Conservatives tend to look ken champion than the liberal Mas- consultant Donna Brazile, Gingrich, more favorably on privatizing pris- sachusetts Democrat and House and Nolan, and attended by several ons, prison services, and probation, Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr. Re- hundred reform enthusiasts. Jones a scheme that liberals view with acting to the death from a crack called it “the Woodstock of criminal deep distrust. The death penalty, overdose of Len Bias, a promising justice.” The only discordant note I which divides the right, is not on the Boston Celtics recruit, O’Neill help- heard came from Senator Cory shared agenda. ed push through the 1986 Anti-Drug Booker, the New Jersey Democrat The most significant question is Abuse Act, which imposed manda- who campaigned as a crimi- whether conservatives are prepared tory sentences, asset forfeitures, and nal-justice reformer. One of the to face the cost of the remedies, the severe sanctions on crack. The sponsors of the summit — a roster from in-prison education and job 1994 crime bill was introduced by a that included Koch Industries and training to more robust probationary Delaware liberal, Joe Biden, and the A.C.L.U. — was #cut50, a bi- supervision and drug and men- championed by . (In this partisan organization that advocates tal-health treatment. Joan Petersilia, Presidential campaign, Hillary halving the prison population over a criminologist who teaches at the

Page -7- Stanford Law School, points to the ill. We didn’t answer the question: if this erode on us,” he said. But if the last great American exercise in not prisons, what?” bipartisan movement can accom- decarceration, half a century ago: Nolan agrees about the cost of plish the things it agrees on, Nolan President Kennedy’s Community alternatives: “In each of the Right has a wish list of additional reforms Mental Health Act, which aimed to on Crime states, we have insisted that he will pitch to conservatives. reduce by half the number of pa- that a large part of the savings be He would like to see abusive prose- tients in state mental hospitals. The put back into the system.” As for his cutors lose their licenses. He would promised alternatives—hundreds of home state, Nolan says, “we were require the police to videotape inter- community care facilities—were not a part of that mess.” Nolan rogations from beginning to end, not never fully funded, and thousands of thinks that Governor Jerry Brown just a confession that may have been deeply troubled people were liber- failed to plan adequate prison alter- improperly extracted. ated into homelessness. The men- natives because “he just wanted to And, mindful of the prisoners tally ill now make up a substantial get the court off his back.” When who have been exonerated while portion of inmates in state prisons conservatives did venture into Cali- waiting on death row, he would like and county jails. fornia, last November, to help pass to end capital punishment. In the “The direction forward is not Proposition 47, the measure re- last week of May, Nolan was urging really clear, because, on the one quired that two-thirds of any money Republican state senators in Ne- hand, the right is saying less govern- saved be funnelled into alternative braska to repeal that state’s death ment, less spending,” Petersilia told correctional programs. Nolan said, penalty, over the governor’s veto. me. “And the left is saying we need “Conservatives have insisted that The repeal prevailed without a vote more investment.” She offers the money be plowed into services be- to spare, making Nebraska the first example of California, which for cause we know that just releasing conservative state in four decades to nearly five years has been under a prisoners or diverting them from do away with the death penalty. Supreme Court order to cull the prisons without services would in- Nolan was jubilant. overcrowded prisons that Nolan crease crime.” That is true, but it “I think the Nebraska vote is a once helped build. “The success tends to be relegated to the fine print pivot point,” he e-mailed me. “You story of downsizing prisons in Cali- in conservative reform literature. can’t get more red than Nebraska, fornia is like nothing the nation has The headlines promise tremendous and the cooperation of flinty conser- ever experienced,” she said. “We savings to taxpayers. vatives and urban blacks was un- have downsized in less than five Nolan has another worry: that stoppable. I think they really en- years twenty-five per cent of all one sensational crime, or a spike in joyed working together and finding prison populations. But look what is the crime rate, or the distraction of common ground. That is the experi- happening at the local, community more polarizing issues could send ence that I have had as well.” In his level, which is that they’ve upsized Republicans and Democrats back to sign-off, he turned to Scripture: jails, and they’ve got a homeless their corners. “We’ve all said we’re “The lamb and the lion shall lie population, they’ve got police offi- one bad incident away from having down together.” cers complaining about the mentally

Page -8-