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664 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 8 (2016)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0664 and id is 1 raw text is: PREFACE Realigning Corrections, California Style By JOAN PETERSILIA W e are very likely at a transformative moment in criminal justice reform. There is great optimism that the United States is mak- ing a decisive move away from the harsh pun- ishment policies that characterized the last 30 years. Prison growth has largely stopped, some states are closing prisons, and Congress and most legislatures are enacting policies that reduce prison sentences for drug crimes and other nonviolent offenses. And in a momentous turnaround, the politi- cal climate has shifted considerably. No longer are politicians calling for a ratcheting up of criminal penalties to control crime, as they were the last time The ANNALS devoted a spe- cial issue to prison reform in 1985 (Our Crowded Prisons, volume 478). Rather, in an era of bitter partisanship on virtually every other issue, both conservatives and progres- sives are calling for criminal justice reform. Perhaps most surprising are the policy posi- tions being taken by several of the declared candidates for the 2016 presidential election (Chettiar et al. 2015). Regardless of his or her political ideology, everyone now running for president agrees that the U.S. prison system is broken and that we are spending too much money on locking up too many people for too long. Even former President Clinton, whose punitive crime policies in the 1990s are partly responsible for today's high incarceration rates, now admits that we put too many people in prison for too long, and overshot the mark (Pilkington 2015). Recent public opinion polls also confirm that American voters overwhelm- ingly support policy changes that reduce incar- ceration. Suddenly, everyone is an advocate for Joan Petersilia, PhD, is the Adelbert H. Sweet Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, and codirector of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center Correspondence: petersilia@law.stanford.edu DOI: 10.1177/0002716215599932 ANNALS, AAPSS, 664, March 2016 8

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