NAACP President and Staunch Conservative Norquist Promote Prison Reform(!)

NAACP President Benjamin Jealous and fierce anti-tax and conservative advocate Grover Norquist have been doing a media tour recently to debate prison reform. The surprise? They’re on the same side of the debate.

Jealous and Norquist, who leads the fiscally ultra-conservative group Americans for Tax Reform, are promoting a recent NAACP report entitled “Misplaced Priorities,” which shows that state budgets have increasingly shifted funds from schools to prisons, to devastating end.

Jealous approaches prison reform from a social justice angle; Norquist, from a fiscal perspective.

In a recent PBS interview, Jealous stated:

“Now, we know that there are policies that can make us safer that cost less, that are more effective. And the time has come for us to actually choose those policies, stop wasting money, stop wasting lives and stop needlessly breaking up families.”

Norquist echoed:

“And when you look at it, you’re seeing a lot of people are sent to prison who perhaps ought not to be in prison, in terms of cost-benefit analysis. . . . We are keeping some people in prison who might be better off in drug rehabilitation or under other kinds of house arrest or other kinds of control, other than very expensive prisons.”

We couldn’t agree more. More diversion, less incarceration, and more mental health and addiction treatment. Moreover, we see no objection to devoting the savings from this approach to education resources.

It’s wrong for 5% of the world’s population to have 25% of the world’s prisoners. But it’s also not affordable.