Right on Crime is a national campaign of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, in partnership with the American Conservative Union Foundation and Prison Fellowship, that supports conservative solutions for reducing crime, restoring victims, reforming offenders, and lowering taxpayer costs. The movement was born in Texas in 2007, and in recent years, dozens of states such as Georgia, Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, have led the way in implementing conservative criminal justice reforms.
Right on Crime has the support and mobilizes the voices of more than 90 prominent conservative leaders who have endorsed the principles of conservative criminal justice reform, including former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Concerned Women for America President Penny Nance, former U.S. Senator Jim DeMint former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, and Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist.
Accomplishments:
With 18 policy analysts, researchers, and law experts working across the nation, Right on Crime has advocated for proven reforms in 38 states. We’ve helped state legislatures pass comprehensive juvenile justice reform bills, overhaul civil asset forfeiture laws, establish oversight committees to ensure results and properly manage taxpayers’ money, close prisons, and divert savings back to the taxpayers and to recidivism-reducing programs.
Goals:
Right on Crime insists that public safety policies, as any government service, should be evaluated on whether they produce the best possible results at the lowest possible cost. In contradiction to that principle, until recently the criminal justice system had expanded to become the second-fastest growing area of state budgets—trailing only Medicaid.
We demand cost-effective approaches that also enhance public safety. We want a prison system that incapacitates dangerous offenders and career criminals but which is not used in such a way that makes nonviolent, low-risk offenders a greater risk to the public upon release than before they entered.
A well-functioning criminal justice system enforces order and respect for every person’s right to property and life, and ensures that liberty does not lead to license. Right on Crime believes the criminal justice system should conform tothe following principles.