IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE to avoid the “strange bedfellows” cliché when reading about the criminal justice reform movement in the 2010s. Conservatives and evangelicals worked alongside bleeding-heart liberals and civil libertarians to fix what they all (at the time) agreed were unjust prison sentences and punitive policies.
Fast-forward a decade, and the bipartisan sleepovers are over. Most of the same advocate groups are still lobbying for reform—and notching victories in some states—but the broad-based path for criminal justice reform bills has narrowed or altogether disappeared in other places.
Claiming to be responding to rising crime and the excesses of progressive reformers, several Republican-controlled state legislatures have not only reversed progress but also rolled back key reforms: increasing prison
