Bernie Kerik, who served as Rudy Giuliani’s police commissioner and has (mostly) maintained a close friendship with Rudy over the years, was a vocal supporter of the First Step Act and attended prison reform events at the Trump White House.
Kerik has spent his years after prison advocating for prison reform. Arguably, he helped make prison reform a popular cause among conservatives.
It’s only recently that conservatives went from “tough on crime” to prison reform. People like Newt Gingrich, one of the world’s biggest assholes who spent the 1990s fear-mongering about drug dealers, rebranded himself a prison reform advocate in the last decade.
Rick Perry, who as governor of Texas executed more prisoners than any other governor in United States history, made himself a conservative leader for the cause with some successful case studies in his state. I wrote about it in 2014 for @thedailybeast: thedailybeast.com/prison-reform-…
Anyway you should read Texas journalists on this issue in particular, not something written by 21 year old me but I really loved learning about prison reform and covering it and I’m pleased it’s a bipartisan issue now and I hope it continues to be a part of presidential politics.
(Also Perry did not, to my knowledge, stop executing people as he rebranded as a prison reform advocate, nor did he change his position on executions. Not implying there was a reversal on that—not that it could matter to the 250+ people he executed, some potentially in error.)
