THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE ACT OF 2009.

Yesterday, I wrote about how the punitive impulse often overwhelms the interest in public safety when it comes to our corrections policy. In introducing the Criminal Justice Act of 2009, which establishes a commission to study our criminal justice system, Sen. Jim Webb attempted to shift the terms of our public debate in the direction of putting public safety first:

America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation's prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous. We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives.

We need to fix the system. Doing so will require a major nationwide recalculation of who goes to prison and for how long and of how we address the long-term consequences of incarceration.

Several Democratic senators (including the two newbies, Kirsten Gillibrand and Roland Burris) as well as Republican Arlen Specter, have signed onto the legislation, which acknowledges that America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, also points out:

Minorities make up a disproportionately large share of prison populations. Black males have a 32 percent chance of serving time in prison at some point in their lives; Hispanic males have a 17 percent chance; white males have a 6 percent chance.

I generally try not to talk about corrections policy in these terms, because the quickest way to sink public approval for better public policy these days seems to be in explicitly acknowledging race to be a part of why our policy is such a disgrace. It shouldn't be papered over, but it shouldn't become the driving rhetoric behind reform: The issue here is that our criminal justice policy isn't serving the public interest.

There are a number of states, such as New York and Kansas, that have successfully reduced their prison population through reforming parole, focusing on re-entry and pursuing alternatives to incarceration. Let's hope the commission listens to them.

-- A. Serwer