Jones is also a noted environmental activist, and I pressed him on whether he thought the Kochs were really interested in improving the lot of minorities and the poor. Wouldn't relaxing some laws or drastically reducing the size of government, as the Kochs' libertarian philosophy aims to do, make it more difficult to hold corporations to account? As long as the policies they're advocating are the right ones, Jones replied, "I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to figure out if their motives are pure." He added, "We are going to fight the Koch brothers tooth and nail on every aspect of their environmental agenda where we don't agree, and we are going to fight alongside them on every piece of criminal justice legislation where we agree. That's how democracy should work."

To allies like Jones, it doesn't matter whether the Kochs are acting in good faith as long as their assistance stands to help the cause. In a neat illustration of the way this issue crosses partisan lines, the ACLU's campaign against mass incarceration is supported by both the Kochs and liberal financier George Soros's Open Society Foundation. Anthony Romero, the ACLU's executive director, acknowledged that some of the group's liberal members aren't thrilled about the Koch partnership: "There's always some unhappiness whenever you work with, quote-unquote, the enemy," he told me. But particularly with Republicans in control of Congress, he said, validation from the likes of the Kochs is the key to moving the issue forward. "Having the Koch brothers involved fundamentally changes the landscape. It gives legitimacy to this issue as a proper field of inquiry for Republican political leaders," he said.

The Kochs' activism fits within a broader trend on the right. Where once Republicans could reliably be stereotyped as tough-on-crime and Democrats as squishy bleeding hearts, recent years have seen many in the GOP question the old dogma of lock-'em-up, spurred by the party's increasingly libertarian bent and a desire to control spiraling prison costs. The 2012 Republican Party platform discarded its old plank endorsing the War on Drugs for one that emphasized prisoner reentry and rehabilitation; at the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference, then-Texas Governor Rick Perry headlined a criminal justice panel at which he urged, "Shut prisons down. Save that money." As The Nation noted approvingly, Perry "has become one of the more aggressive prison reformers in the country," and he's been joined by Republican governors or former governors in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New Jersey.

Bipartisan efforts at criminal-justice reform abound in Congress. Republican Senator Rand Paul has teamed up with Democrat Cory Booker to propose making it easier for juvenile and nonviolent offenders to have their records expunged, while Republican Mike Lee is working with Democrat Dick Durbin to reduce mandatory-minimum sentences. Republican Representative James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin—who once led the charge to impeach Bill Clinton and was the principal proponent of the Patriot Act—is working on a comprehensive package of reforms to address such issues as asset forfeiture, sentencing disparities, and the restoration of rights to young offenders. Two other leading Republican senators, John Cornyn of Texas and Rob Portman of Ohio, are also involved in the issue. Yet the issue's prospects remain uncertain—criminal-justice reform isn't one of the areas House and Senate leaders most frequently mention as potential goals.