Left and Right Agree on Criminal Justice Reforms; Congress Should Move with Bipartisan Consensus

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Byline: Alan B. Mollohan and David A. Keene, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

While Americans seem to be sharply divided along partisan lines when it comes to important domestic policy issues - take health care, immigration or the national debt, for example - in at least one area of national importance, conservatives and liberals are increasingly united: criminal justice reform.

With only 5 percent of the world's population, America incarcerates 25 percent of the world's jail and prison population, imprisoning individuals at a rate five times higher than comparable Western, industrialized nations. During the upcoming fiscal year, the federal government would spend nearly $7 billion, a nearly $300 million increase from this year, under the president's budget proposal to house …