The Political Dynamics of Justice Reform in The U.S.

there’s a risk that some of the most promising developments in Texas and elsewhere for
real criminal justice reform are being rendered invisible.
Compared to the prison-building boom years of the late 1980s and 1990s, Texas now
has a number of powerful statewide and local organizations to counter the Texas
District and County Attorneys Association and other law enforcement groups, which are
the biggest obstacle to criminal justice reform. Groups that have been locked out for so
long from political power in Texas are pushing back to claim their rightful place in
policymaking and politics. The electoral and political mobilization of low-income people,
people of color, and the people most hurt by the carceral state has, among other things,
helped turn once-sleepy judicial and D.A. races into real political contests.
The failure of the Democrats to turn any statewide offices blue in the 2018 midterm
elections has obscured the political earthquake that occurred in Texas last fall, when the
rate of voter turnout surged to rival that of presidential years. Democrats flipped four
important intermediate state appeals courts and now hold majorities on half of the
state’s fourteen appeals courts. In Houston’s Harris County, the Democratic Party
completed a sweep of all countywide races, ousting fifty-nine municipal court judges.
Most of the victorious municipal judge candidates, including nineteen black women who
ran on the “Black Girl Magic” slate, supported cash bail reform, unlike their ousted
opponents. In another upset victory, Harris County chose twenty-seven-year-old Lina
Hidalgo, an ardent champion of criminal justice reform, as its next chief executive.
There were also major Democratic upsets in D.A. races in other urban areas, including
Dallas, San Antonio, and Fort Bend.
Certainly these outcomes were part of the Beto O’Rourke effect (his challenge to
incumbent Senator Ted Cruz helped energize Democratic voters), but that effect itself is
part of a deeper political transformation in Texas that has radically changed the political
landscape compared to thirty years ago, at the height of the prison boom, or even
fifteen years ago, before mass incarceration became a national issue.
This is why leading conservatives, many of them associated with Right on Crime, have
been at the forefront of efforts in Texas and elsewhere to suppress the vote through
enhanced prison terms and fines for voter fraud, through voter intimidation, and through
fights to control redistricting power: in order to maintain the white, Republican minority.
Uncritical promulgation of an elite-driven model of criminal justice reform with Right on
Crime as its anchor has come at a high political cost. It is premised on promoting a
“pragmatic” vision of politics that is actually deeply ideological and incapable of
ameliorating the country’s most pressing problems—from mass incarceration to global
warming to massive economic and political inequality. As Jane Mayer of The New
Yorker has noted in looking at the particular role the Koch brothers play in criminal
justice reform, there’s a strong strain of anti-government libertarianism at work—they
distrust government power, and yet they have no affirmative vision for making life better
for people being crushed. Participating in efforts like Right on Crime allows them to don
cloaks of political reasonableness and moderation while they continue to pursue
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