Justice isn’t partisan

Was that a pig I saw flying past my window? I thought pigs would fly before I would agree with Mike Huckabee about anything, but his column on last Saturday’s Voices page is spot on. Tom Cotton is wrong on this issue, and our former governor is right. It’s refreshing to see a conservative Republican supporting this issue.

“We lock up a lot of people that we are mad at, rather than the ones we are afraid of,” as former director of Arkansas Department of Correction Director Larry Norris said, is the best definition I’ve ever seen of our current criminal justice system.

The system needs reforming. The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2017 in the U.S. Senate is a step in the right direction and should be supported by legislators on both sides of the aisle. Justice is not a partisan issue. Saving money is not a partisan issue. Locking up nonviolent offenders for life is not a political issue; it is an issue of common sense.

The days of “lock ’em up and throw away the key” have passed. We have learned a lot since the 1980s when we overreacted to the crack cocaine epidemic, but we are still bound by the laws passed then. It’s time we fixed a broken system.

Thank you, Mike. I hope our senators will listen to one of their own. MAYA PORTER

Johnson the issues facing us, let alone this issue? Of CAFOs in Arkansas and the U.S., how many of us can speak intelligently about how many there are, how they are growing, who owns them, what percentage are owned by and exported to China (which accepts the hogs, but leaves the pollution in the U.S.), etc.? Who can speak intelligently about how much money is funded through lobbying to keep this situation as it is? Who of us in Arkansas has driven by the hog factory in Newton County and smelled the air? Who has observed the changes in the waters this factory drains into?

Second truth of human nature: habits of thinking. We habitually think of farmers as people who own a few acres, who love the Lord, go to church, and care about animals and the land. We don’t think of them like Smithfield (owned by a Chinese company), Tyson, etc., who contract with large industrial farms for the feed, and contract with CAFOs for their product, and who pass the pollution issues on to the least able to do anything about it.

Third, indifference (perhaps the worst of these three truths about human nature). I recently participated in a few question-and-answer sessions with candidates for state office. The question of this hog factory in Newton County, or the plans for another in wine country, never came up, and when I brought it up, I could sense the indifference to this question in the room.

I’m asking you not to be ignorant and indifferent to this issue. Make it an issue … it’s nonpartisan, and needs to be addressed.

RG SMITH

Rogers