Jackson Free Press

A few weeks ago, the Jackson Free Press published a lengthy cover story exposing the mindless politics behind juvenile-justice policies that treat children as adults and end up turning many children into hardened adult criminals, increasing dangerous crime rather than making society safer. The response to the story was encouraging—one judge, who must remain unnamed, even wrote to thank us for educating him about these issues.

However, as Mississippi heads into an election year, we are not very hopeful that intelligence will blanket the state capitol when it comes to passing the kinds of criminal-justice policies that actually work, but have little appeal to someone trying to get elected on empty "tough-on-crime" promises.

You know the drill in our state: Ultra-conservatives rant a lot about all the thugs taking over (often using old statistics out of context; ahem, governor), and even those who pretend to be more progressive (ahem, attorney general) try to one-up conservative opponents with the kind of policies that are costly and do little or nothing to make our state safer. From state executions to laws that allow unqualified medical examiners to help send innocent people to prison, it's an idiotic drill that has been hard to change, regardless of the actual facts.

But there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon. Reason magazine editor Radley Balko, who runs his column at JFPDaily.com every Tuesday, wrote this week about conservatives who are actually rethinking policies such as mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders, and even starting to support smart options such as rehabilitation rather than incarceration for nonviolent offenders.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation just launched Right on Crime, a think tank to convince conservatives to change the way they approach criminal justice. The site quotes Reagan attorney general Ed Meese and Texas Gov. Rick Perry in support, and states: "[R]esearch suggested that (incarceration) reached a point of diminishing returns, as recidivism rates increased and more than one million nonviolent offenders filled the nation's prisons." It also pointed out numbers that are hard to ignore in touch economic times: Prisons (many private) are absorbing 85 percent of corrections funds, strapping communities' ability to afford smarter options like probation, parole and rehabilitation.

This effort out of tough-on-crime Texas is encouraging. We urge Mississippi lawmakers to get on board and start thinking smarter about criminal policy for adults and children that will actually make our state safer and save taxpayers money (even if their private prisons donors don't like it). We are living in a time when we cannot afford the kinds of empty sloganeering that leads to dumb public policy while violating the rights of Americans, including innocent ones.