My column on the Rittenhouse verdict: the left threw away a golden opportunity to get conservatives on board with criminal justice reform. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Instead, people who are constantly tweeting about "ending mass incarceration" suddenly started sounding like the hardest core 1980s law-and-order conservatives. When talking about, let's remember, a *17 year old*.
This created the impression that what mattered was less what Rittenhouse had done, then his politics and his skin color. That was a disastrous message for criminal justice reform.
Now, you can snap back and say "Poor black kids wouldn't get the same benefit of the doubt". And in many cases, that's undoubtedly true. But that's why it is so urgent to fix the system, rather than demanding we "lock Kyle Rittenhouse up and throw away the key".
Mass incarceration would be bad even if it were exquisitely racially balanced. It's bad because it wastes a human life, precious and irreplaceable, behind the bars of a cage.
Everyone should care about mass incarceration even when it involves people they dislike--no, especially when it does. Because that's how you build a coalition to stop condemning so many humans to spend so many of their limited moments on earth staring at the bars of their cage.
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