Charles Koch is committed to reforming the criminal justice system:
“We are not a nation of bad people. We are a nation that made some bad choices,” he said.
“We’ve become addicted to severe sentences, to the point where we are mass-producing convictions in many courts, while not providing defense counsel on a timely basis.
“We’ve got to fix that, and there is now a growing consensus among people knowledgeable about justice and economics that we are wasting precious human resources in criminal justice.”
Koch is never quoted in the article, just his chief council. But still, this is the promised conservative critique of prisons we’ve been waiting for. On the other hand, Koch has only donated single-digit millions, (i.e. “seven figures”) which is a small amount of his political contributions in total. The real question is what kind of pressure he’s putting on Republican nominees and politicians.
Will this be in the Republican Party’s platform for 2016? Will it be in the debates?
Second Opinions