Rick Perlstein doesn’t believe in gradual, incremental reform.  Writing in the American Prospect, he argues that FDR and LBJ rammed through ambitious legislative agendas as quickly as possible because (like the Devil in Revelation 12:12) they knew their time was short.  The great depression gave FDR his opening; with LBJ it was the civil rights movement and the assassination of JFK. 

Perlstein is too young to remember the 1960s, but his attention to the historical record gives him a deep understanding of past epochs.  His latest book, Nixonland, provides a 780-page travelogue through the trauma of the 1960s and early 70s.  Perlstein argues that the Watts riot (and the apocalyptic horrors that followed in its wake) sounded the death knell for the civil rights movement. 

Friends of Justice understands how quickly windows of opportunity can slam shut.  In the wake of the Tulia drug sting, laws were passed restricting the use of uncorroborated snitch testimony.  This legislation wouldn’t have stood a chance prior to Tulia (and might not if it were introduced today).  Similarly, the distressing rash of DNA exonerations has produced what theologians call a “Kairos moment”: a time of crisis when the stars align and a new thing becomes possible.

The American public thinks the criminal justice system is tilted to the advantage of the accused with little thought for victims’ rights.  It is commonly believed that dangerous criminals are frequently returned to the streets by silly technicalities; that draconian sentences make criminals think twice; that young people will say no to drugs if the penalties for using and dealing go high enough and that serial killers stalk the land (after all, you see five or six or them in action every night on TV).  People believe the system is equitable because, on television shows like CSI and Law and Order, the perps are always rich and white.  When crime rates soar it shows we need to be even tougher; when they fall it demonstrates the success of harsh sentencing.   

We believe these things because we are afraid of muggers and gang violence and drugs and things that go bump in the night.  Politicians act tough because macho posturing attracts votes.  Why else would a sensible man like John McCain tell Rick Warren’s congregants that he aims to defeat evil?

It takes a blunt shock (to borrow Rick Perlstein’s phrase) to transcend the paranoia that appears to be America’s default position. 

Last Friday, Bill Moyers devoted an entire hour to an intriguing conversation with Andrew J. Bacevitch, a conservative military expert who wonders how American leaders ever believed they could remake the Middle East through military might.  Bacevitch, like most traditional conservatives, focuses on the limits of power and the dangers of hubris. 

The same mentality that took us into Iraq has created an American Gulag that now houses over 2 million souls.  We think we can solve complex social problems with hammers and steel.  American fortunes in Iraq improved considerably when our soldiers began treating the populace like human beings.  This shift doesn’t make the invasion any less of a disaster, but it has limited the damage.  A similar approach to America’s poorest and most volatile neighborhoods would improve public safety the way a thousand prisons never could. 

Street criminals and suicide bombers are both driven by a desperation so deep that the normal human concern for self-preservation goes by the boards.  Most drug dealers and petty thieves know they will eventually be caught; they simply can’t envision an existence apart from the streets.  There is a nihilism at work in the suicide bomber and in the street punk.  Neither will step back from the cliff unless they see a reason to hope. 

The criminal justice system will stagger down the same dysfunctional path until prominent politicians have the guts to call insanity by its proper name.  Will Barack Obama or John McCain be the one?  Probably not.  No knock against either of these men, but advocating a more compassionate approach to crime, poverty and violence is a sure recipe for political suicide–at least in the present environment.  

That’s why we must keep the tragic consequences of the prevailing madness before the eyes of the American people.  Only in the wake of a blunt shock like Tulia or Jena can politicians act decisively.  Incremental reform has gained a tenuous foothold.  We have stopped the bleeding.   But we won’t see any real healing until ordinary voters grasp how badly broken the system has become.