Why HBO Will Save The World

Inspired by The Wire, Ross Douthat muses on the utter failure of our crime prevention strategy of locking up anyone who commits pretty much any crime. Money quote:

There's a Catch-22 at work, too: So long as crime keeps falling, it's taken by most people (the Fox Butterfields of the world aside) as a sign the system is working; but then if crime starts inching back up, as it has the past two years (though there's good news for this year), well, nobody's going to be interested in reforming prisons during an era of rising crime!

Ross is spot on here. Much like only Clinton could really make headway in clearing the logjam that was the welfare system in the early 90's (you may or may not have liked his solutions, but hopefully we all agree there were some serious problems), only a Republican can begin us down the path of bringing some marginal amount of sanity to our criminal justice system without being fatally flagged with the epithet of being 'Soft On Crime.'