Story highlights Holly Harris: 2016 was a year of national partisan gridlock, but states got things done

2017 could show an even bigger impact on incarceration problem, she writes

Holly Harris is executive director of the U.S. Justice Action Network, the largest bipartisan organization working to reform the justice system. The opinions expressed here are hers.

(CNN) 2016 will never be known as the year America engaged in deep policy debates. The presidential campaign became mired in personal attacks, Republicans and Democrats retreated to their corners, and there wasn't much oxygen left for conversations on how to fix our country's biggest problems. For that reason, groundbreaking bipartisan efforts on the Hill to reform our federal justice system failed to get a floor vote in either chamber in the 114th Congress.

And yet, justice reform may have had its strongest year ever.

Holly Harris

As federal reform legislation stalled, focus shifted to the states, where leaders have come face-to-face with the harsh reality that we are putting too many people behind bars for too long for the wrong reasons. Because of that, taxpayers are spending too much money on a justice system that feeds a revolving door of incarceration and fails to provide the public safety return our communities deserve.

So the states became the compelling, but quiet, justice reform story of 2016. From Georgia to Minnesota Maryland to Alaska , the states passed broad, sweeping overhauls to unduly harsh sentencing laws, archaic criminal codes, and inadequate rehabilitation and reentry programming. And states that had previously implemented reforms showed impressive public safety results. Over the past five years, the 10 states that most significantly reduced their prison populations saw a more significant decline in crime than those states where imprisonment rates continue to climb.

The reform movement flexed political muscle, too. In Oklahoma, a state with the country's second highest incarceration rate and the highest incarceration rate among women, voters approved two ballot measures by a healthy margin: one that would reclassify certain felonies as misdemeanors, thereby reducing the prison population; and a second that would reinvest those cost savings into addiction and mental health treatment programming. Keep in mind that Oklahoma is a deep red state that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump.