The New York Time’s Sunday Magazine has a long article on recent shifts by some Republicans to make prison policy more liberal, with focus on programs that aim to treat prisoners as individuals worthy of education, health care, and counseling to enable their return to society. Sam Brownback has been one of the leading proponents of this liberal shift, finding grounds for it in his faith. Brownback has pushed for faith-based prison programs – using government money to fund Christian groups to do rehabilitation and treatment inside prisons.
When I visited him earlier this year, Brownback seemed highly aware of the dangers, even for a conservative Republican from Kansas, of seeming the slightest bit soft on crime. “I wouldn’t say I represent the mainstream of this,” he insisted. “I think we have to prove results” — that is, demonstrate an actual reduction in recidivism rates among newly released prisoners. He continued: “I personally favor a number of these faith-based approaches. But if there are other approaches, let’s try them. This is an enormous problem, and since the ’70s, we have basically just said we’ll lock people up.”
Later, in his office in the Senate Hart Building, Brownback implicitly raised the specter of Willie Horton — the fear that he and the other sponsors of the bill would be blamed for crimes committed by the formerly incarcerated: “Imagine you get one bad prisoner coming out and committing a heinous crime, which is likely to happen. And people’s reaction is, they get mad. They don’t want this guy out on the streets that’s doing this. If you can’t show, look, by doing these programs we are cutting the recidivism rate overall, I don’t think it will stand the blowback when that situation inevitably happens.”
Brownback is pushing prison policies in a liberal model with a religious twist. He recognizes that there must be immediate results or else the hue and cry from the Republican base will cause these policies to be abandoned. Acting from one’s convictions is always valuable, but I don’t know how well liberal prison policy advocacy fits with Brownback’s self-description as a “full scale conservative.” My guess is his opponents will be sure to highlight this inconsistency in primary attack ads.
Technorati Tags: 2008 Presidential election, prison, Sam Brownback
3 Responses to “Brownback’s Liberalism”
Good catch guys!
If anyone is interested in a prisoner rehab program that ACTUALLY WORKED and lowered recidivism rates check out what San Francisco did http://drummajorinstitute.org/......php?ID=29
we have podcasts, web video and a transcript.
Something to say?
From my understanding of the program, it’s actually not a “liberal” program. It’s inherently discriminatory because it allows prisoners who accept a very conservative version of Christianity a better rehabilitation process in process. If you’re not willing to accept that version of Christianity you’re out of luck.
Left by Kombiz Lavasany
December 24, 2006 at 5:27pm