So many of our laws today are directed at people we dont like or metadata, not people we are afraid of. I used to practice law years and years ago. When i was in law school taking my criminal justice, or rather i criminal law required for graduation i was taught to things. What is a crime . Thats the first question we have to answer in class. I suspect most of the people in this room may not know what a crime is. But i was taught that a crime is what the statute says is a crime. Thats not true today. There are lots and lots of things that are crimes that have nothing to do with statues. The second thing i was taught in law school, which i fancy pants law school where we are supposed to know everything. Certificate was taught was to commit a crime unit had the intention of doing the actor was violative of the law. Thats no longer true. There are things that are crimes that a legislative body never voted on but there are things that are crimes that nothing do with ones intent or ones beliefs or ones knowledge. We have entered an era where we are locking up all sorts of people because we are not at them and not for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with our safety. Is driving up costs, and more important than the cost, is depriving people of their liberty. I will begin we can all agree that is a last resort, response. Grover norquist with the americans for taxpayers reform. You are one of the more visible National Figures in the criminal justice debate and you been committed to this for some time. Tell us about how you got your and what your organization focuses on. We are a americans for tax reform, not in the business of performing tax returns. But they can do whatever they want. Within reason. I was interested in the subject a long time. I went to tria trials instead of going to senior and high schools which is a lot more fun. Its a very important issue. For many other reasons down talked about, its kind of rough on some if you put them in prison for executing and you better know what you were doing. You dont want People Living in fear of not to be. But as a conservative activist, spent a lot of my time, Taxpayer Group spent a lot of time focusing on things government shouldnt do. We are very good point out that stupid think of no government shouldnt do that or the federal government should do that. We didnt spend a lot of time on those things the government ought to do like a military Strong Enough to keep the canadians on their side of the border. And putting people, bad guys in prison and executing murderers and being tough on crime your i always assumed while the generals and the wardens and the prosecutors would take care of that and i would work on the things government ought not to do, a point of fact, theres a lot of work to do for conservatives if we are going to be governing instead of whining. We need to look at those things government ought to do and say how should this be done in the least destructive way and least expensive way, least expensive in terms of lives and families and dollars. When you realize the left was incapable of participating in reforming criminal justice because they were not interested in the subject, and nobodys going to listen to them if they got the right answer in vermont, nobody was going to listen to them. Theres a wonderful chart that you have, that texas was the first day to work on criminal Justice Reform. In utah gross out from the red states, from the republican and conservative states. This whole criminal Justice Reform from mens rea to civil Asset Forfeiture, fighting against over criminalization to looking at licensing laws which keep felons from getting a job when they get out of prison. So theres a licensing requirement to rob banks so you could do that but you cant braid hair. All of these things that are very good conservative positions have been adopted in republican states and now and simply states as well as its move forward. I think we need to spend as much time looking at the pentagon and the criminal Justice System to reform them, not to abolish them as we do this programs that we would really like to see get much smaller and oracle await because a government ought not to do x, y or z. The left can participate in this debate until he open up the zone. When texas did this, i testified in various states and your testified, they did this in texas and all of a sudden people look up. All, so its not one of these weak on crime let all the murderers out things youre talking about. I say they did it five years ago. Five years ago . Two election cycles and nobody lost an election over the subject . It not only comes with a place in terms of being serious about fighting crime. He saw the wonderful numbers on crime going down while these reforms, perhaps these reforms are going through. At the same time they want to know that it is safe from the somebody will not yell at them that they are weak on crime. If these ideas had been thought up in vermont they wouldve gone nowhere because you could not a gone to the people of mr. Inslee theyve got a great idea in vermont. You try. But texas any other states that have moved first have allowed it to move forward. This whole idea of federalism where we are getting more and more states to do this and not looking at the federal government making similar reform at the national level, we are not asking anybody to vote for something that isnt politically safe. We havent been losing house state legislators seats, governors races. All just the opposite. Its been a wonderful opportunity or conservatives to message i care and to me. And its worked state by state. Weve learned more. Weve gotten better at it. This is a model for conservatives to engage but the other model is passive in the states. I dont think any federal law should be passed unless 10 states have done first. Do it in a bunch of states can show it works. Thats what the movement has that and i think its a model not just for this issue but for others. We are going to take a specific issues that are being debated in congress, in that there is built but for everyones information there will not be any endorsements of bills from the panelists today or picking one over the other. One of the important things i kind of want to clear up because i think its important for the context of this discussion is that the impression that each of you have in your organizations and working in this, because in washington, d. C. , often people say on the 6 00 news and on the sunday talk shows, wheres the compromised . Where are the people in the middle that can split the baby and come up with legislation. Grover can start. I think youll hear a lot from us but is this about compromise or is this about working towards shared values of principled people on both the left and the right, grover speak with the people in the middle do this to us to the status quo qaeda because of all the reasonable people thought this was the way to respond to everything. Leftright coalitions and criminal Justice Reform is one of a handful that it been successful. First of all in this case conservatives have led what the left doesnt have credibility. If they let the same fight, it just wouldnt work. I wouldnt join their parade because im not sure i trust everybody, but on a right Left Coalition there is no compromise on principles. We are working to do the same thing perhaps for Different Reasons the may be different like expenses, different senses of what works and what doesnt but when you sit down with the guys on the aclu they are very serious about mens rea, criminal intent. Intent. They think i this is an importat thing. There are other guys on the left who arent because they want everybody to go to prison for environmental rules made up by bureaucrats. To our people on the left of principle who actually think well of law matters, and they get scared at the idea that the wrong guy ends up in charge and they are the target of the regulators. This is not right and left get together and do something in the middle they both agreed a stupid and destructive but it was halfway from where they wanted to be. This is where weve been able to say to we need to keep this many people in prison for this long, yeyes or no, does it work . How to get people out so they dont come back to prison . Civil Asset Forfeiture which was touched on. Cops stop your car, we say we think you might have drugs in the car. You saw the new one, they take your debit card, take the money out of your bank account. We are getting some laws passed in the United States to not let the police steal your car and the money in your car. Unless theres a conviction. If youre convicted and it really was proceeds of bank robberies, okay good. But they shouldnt steal it and let you been convicted. You saw the numbers, theres more money taken away from americans i and civil Asset Forfeiture last year than robbers. Its a big deal, ma a very sad, big number. All of these reforms are ones people of principle right and left can agree on. We dont agree with everything the theres a whole bunch of criminal justice things were working on but the ones we cant agree and pass legislation state by state and federally, its not a question of sacrificing principles. There isnt any bill we look at, theres other good stuff in there where thats not the deal. This is not a compromise with stupid ideas. This is working with people who on principle we can agree with. Before we go to dan, i want to reinforce that i can imagine a bill passing in any state cant that showed an increase in crime. Theres been no evidence, and interest in the states with ever reform that they passed have done a much better job than the Historical Health of tracking things. And every proposal from the right and the left and every bill that is going any traction at all is actually improve Public Safety. I think that gets lost in the debate. Is this a compromise of the american conservative unions values or a chance to express your values and find them attractive to a broader audience . I think your first question kind of related to the legislative process, and the left and the right compromise. And i just want to reiterate that so much of what is going on now within the criminal justice sphere is not legislated in orientation. There is no compromise. Its going on bureaucratically. Professor strauss at columbia has championed the idea that the bureaucracies should capture the political process, it should leave politics. It should control the people but that runs counter to the entire founding of our nation. We believe that sovereignty resides in the person, and at our nations founding we understood that because our whole constitution begins not with we the Continental Congress or with the states but we the founding fathers, but we the people. There is this concept not were typically left is pushing the bureaucracy to move ahead of the people so than the bureaucracy creates all of these laws, criminal laws, that include cars ration as well as stiff fines. Outside of the political process, i do not mean partisan process, but how people govern themselves, political philosop philosophy. And as weve seen the legislative branch diminished in stature, one of the consequences of that is in the growth of the criminal justice state. We need, Congress Needs to take its rightful place in this process and we need to return to a place where members of congress on the left and the right can Work Together to address issues in a bipartisan way. Taken to this process. Take it back from the bureaucracy and then as members of Congress Move forward, understand everything they do needs to be based on the idea that the liberty of the individual is paramount and should only be outraged when someone has committed something that is really bad. At prison fellowship we a traditional apply things by saying amen. Thank you for that. Derek, right on crime is involved in coalitions. Its been heavily involved with the states that have experienced that only for success legislatively, where the legislative branches have done what dan describes and what we Hope Congress will do, but youve been around to see the results of the work and to see it play out. In those cases do you feel that right on crime was a principal player or do you feel you were drawn into compromise up until . Most certainly the former. If you look at this in terms of a spectrum of ideology can we are not just groups meeting in the middle of a bell curve. Its more of a you and we just havent overlap of these particular issues. Rate example of this coming from taxes in 2015. Prior to we wanted to states the use of the criminal Justice System has basically been you a first resort for kids skipping school. You have a class c. Misdemeanor for skipping school if you are absent or late for three days or more. I always make the joke that this would basically make me a criminal both bonnie and clyde when i was a youngster but we were one of two states that still use that. And through a concerted effort between us on the right and texas appleseed on the left, we were able to compromise, or overlap on this particular issue with the same exact policy prescription. Neither of us cover my cigar valley. They are still advocating for payday lender reform and school to prison pipeline reform in things like that, things that we are not a system advocating for. But on the criminal justice side i would say interlude into school discipline, we were 100 agreement on. This is just one example of where we find that issue as opposed to changing what tbtf stand for. You see that across issues come across the specter another great example of that in michigan. You saw the Mackinac Center and the michigan chapter of the aclu both shoulder to shoulder champion in the mens array of reform. And again this might show that the federal process tends to be a little detached from it but both of them have natural constituencies that were very proximally affected by this law or as the case were that lack of law. You generally find these on, allies overlapping on these particular issues and then they move forward on that without changing the core of their beliefs. The next question it seems in the elephant in the room, if you will, when discussing these issues for a number of congress would be, for 40 years weve had a template that to be successful politically whether youre running as republican or a democrat to lock people up for longer periods of time and more people in prison is the political safe move. Had to do the opposite is a political risky move. We are seeing overwhelming evidence that the visual forms that these reformed actually reduce new crime. Has that change the political dynamic in america . Is a no vote on reforms that address fiscal oversight and liberty issues, the performance of the system, whats a member of Congress Looking at when theyre presented with these bills that have the research and the support in front of them . I think you hit both the good and bad on the head in that question. You have generally a policy issue, criminal justice and reform is a policy issue that requires an elevator speech. It doesnt sound like very well. However, here we have this litany of successes both in the states and across the variety of programs. I also think the fruit of it, clinically speaking, as a neutral third party observer, i think that is diminishing if not wholly gone. What youve seen in recent campaign cycles is that where i would say the tough on crime has been invoked, it tends to be more of a definite as opposed to a tip of the spear and when it has aired pictures has not had any flooding. He also see that all the polling that goes on in tandem, a texas weve been polling on this issue specifically since 2013. 2013 we were a good five years on from our reforms in 2007. We wanted to look at what about the hearts and minds . Are the hearts and minds with us ask we found not only does the fact of people wanting to see common sense reform, and conservative reform, not only did we see that very strongly supported, weve actually seen some very credible effects on the. In an article that me and others put into criminal journal, we saw that conservative identification predict a decent amount of ones affinity towards rehabilitation. You see that in and of itself tends to drive a lot of the public preference. Thats not to say that isnt a punitive element to the. That element is overshadowed by the rehabilitation and a user plays the second second filter a lot of people say we need to have a strong deterrent system. When polled on deterrence itself, deterrence gets at most 7 of people saying they should be the purpose of our criminal justice is a. Its not that they dont want to punish. Its not that they dont even want to be, thats something not what drives a. We found people, almost two to one would rather spend money on effective rehabilitation programs and custodial sanctions, prisons or jails. That persist across the board, across ideology and age groups. This is in texas. This isnt what the average person in kennebunkport thanks. This is what people in tyler think. So i think when you look at whats going on in the states its really giving a better sense of where the american political policy imagination is on this. Grover, you mentioned in your remarks already about the performance of governmental institutions and that conservatives have traditionally looked at quite after the things they consider unnecessary or overstepping the proper role of government. This is an area where theres probably consensus that this is a proper role of government but there has been a lot of scrutiny. My dear wife stacy was at home is sometimes better at summing up of the issues and policy issues than i am. She would simply say hospitals are supposed to make people healthier classrooms are supposed make people smarter. The criminal Justice System is supposed to reduce the crime, hold people accountable and pay back victims. Whats your take on the performance of the system from a taxpayers perspective . It hasnt done a very good job. Its gotten extremely expensive because people dont focus on it but we are spending 50,000 a year in california to put an adult in prison for year, 25,000 in florida. These are pretty significant numbers. If you can punish somebody and or rehabilitate them in 10 years instead of 15, thats a lot of money that has been saved. If you can keep someone out of going to prison without, and keeping them aw