The doublethink of the FIRST STEP Act
By Vivian Nixon, Opinion Contributor — 12/17/18 12:35 PM EST Today’s political environment often begs comparison to the dystopian world in Orwell’s 1984, as truth gives way to fake news and our airwaves become replete with “doublethink,†a term coined and defined as “deliberate, perverse, or unconscious acceptance or promulgation of conflicting facts, principles, etc.â€
But nowhere is doublethink more chillingly wielded than with the FIRST STEP Act, the bipartisan criminal justice reform bill now before the Senate. Ostensibly a criminal justice reform act, FIRST STEP aims to lower federal incarceration rates and improve conditions of confinement in federal prisons. If enacted, the bill would likely accomplish these aims to a small extent.
But under the aegis of reform—and despite a few good provisions—this bill would improve conditions for only a tiny minority of America’s carceral population while promoting the interests of unaccountable for-profit prison contractors, signaling a long-term regression to failed policies and practices demonstrably based on racial bias, and implementing a standard of government surveillance that heretofore has been confined to dystopian fiction.
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https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/judicial/421687-the-doublethink-of-the-first-step-act
