Jon Gabriel

The Arizona Republic Opinion

Americans just survived a midterm campaign that featured little but attacks and counterattacks. Considering the acrimony, many voters consider bipartisanship a bygone dream.

But Republican leadership in the lame-duck Senate has an exceptional opportunity to improve the lives of thousands of Americans. All they need to do is show some common sense. And spine.

Back in May, the House passed the First Step Act, a modest effort to reform our broken criminal justice system. Prominent Republicans and Democrats urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to pass the legislation before this Congress runs out of time.

Yet he continues to balk.

Our justice system doesn't make sense

Criminal justice reform is one of the few issues pushed by well-meaning people on both sides of the partisan divide. That’s because the United States has a serious prison problem.

We house nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners despite containing just 5 percent of the world’s population.

About half a million Americans were incarcerated in 1980; now that number is 2.2 million. If all our inmates were counted as a city, it would be the fifth-largest in the U.S., landing between Houston and Phoenix.

The racial makeup is disturbingly lopsided, with black Americans making up about 40 percent of total prisoners even though they are just 13 percent of the population.

If the human cost doesn’t move you, the financial cost will. We spend about $500 billion a year on imprisonment and social costs combined, yet more than 75 percent of state offenders will be re-arrested within five years. All of this adds to our insane $22 trillion deficit.

Our criminal justice system doesn’t make sense from a humanitarian or fiscal perspective. It hardly can be called “justice” at all.

A small step, but its impact would spread

Naming the bill a “first step” is apt. It focuses exclusively on federal inmates, which make up a small minority of the total number of prisoners.

If passed, however, it would reduce mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders, who make up nearly half the population, and would expand opportunities for inmates to reduce their time and receive job training.

Once the reforms prove successful, most states would likely follow, expanding these improvements from coast to coast.

Shortly after the election, Trump asked the Senate to send him a bill, saying “I’ll be waiting with a pen.” It helps that former Attorney General Jeff Sessions is out of the picture because his views on incarceration are stuck in the high-crime 1980s.

House Speaker Paul Ryan praised the president’s endorsement as "an encouraging sign that we can achieve substantive reforms to our criminal justice system in this Congress." In May, the Speaker presided over a 360-59 victory for the effort.

Top Senate Republicans agree. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R–Iowa, insisted that there is "plenty of time to pass First Step Act in December," while Sens. Lindsey Graham, R–S.C., and Rand Paul, R–Ky., also asked for a vote.

If it fails now, the effort is likely dead

Yet their Majority Leader remains unmoved.

According to The New York Times, McConnell told the White House that there probably isn’t enough time to hold a vote on First Step Act this year. He added that “if the bill has enough support” he might bring it up in the next session.

Of course, if he delays the vote until after Democrats take over the House, the lower chamber will need to hold yet another vote on the measure, delaying reforms even further. With 2020 looming, it’s doubtful that a Speaker from the other party will be eager to hand the GOP a popular win.

Time is running out and Sen. McConnell needs to step up to the challenge. Reforming our criminal justice system is one of the few ideas that unites both parties and everyone from the ACLU to the Koch brothers.

It might be the last bipartisan legislation we’ll be seeing for a long while.

Jon Gabriel is editor-in-chief of Ricochet.com and a contributor to The Arizona Republic, where this column first appeared. You can follow him on Twitter at @exjon.