Liberalism and Public Order

In the 2012 platform, Democrats took tough on crime stances like, ‘Democrats are fighting for new funding that will help keep cops on the street and support our police, firefighters, and emergency medical technicians. Republicans and Mitt Romney have opposed and even ridiculed these proposals, but we believe we should support our first responders.’... But by the time the 2016 platform was released, the conversation had taken a dramatic turn. In 2016, ‘Democrats are committed to reforming our criminal justice system and ending mass incarceration.’ What’s more, this iteration of the platform didn’t promise to be smart on crime in that Kleiman sense of finding cost-effective alternatives to incarcerations. What it says is that, ‘instead of investing in more jails and incarceration, we need to invest more in jobs and education, and end the school-to-prison pipeline.’