This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, October 9th, 2003.

I'm Caleb Brown.

We should have learned a lot from the Get Tough on Crime approach of the 1990s.

As fentanyl remains a problem driving deadly overdoses

throughout the United States, that get tough approach

has its allure.

Lauren Krasai is deputy director at the Justice Action Network.

We spoke about how lawmakers are beginning to rethink

Get Tough in the age of fentanyl.

What can we say with confidence about state moves

with respect to sentencing, you know, over the decade previous to COVID.

Well, a lot of states, particularly in conservative states, had seen that in the 1990s when they had these tough sentences, they really cracked down on all sorts of crime, lengthen sentences and time served, that their prisons were

becoming overcrowded, they didn't have space to house all of the influx of individuals who were required to spend time in prison as a result of these

tough laws. And states were in crisis. I mean, they had overcrowding, it was very expensive.

And one of the states that led that effort

in taking a different approach was Texas

and they reduced their prison population

through some modest reforms and they really kind of kicked off this criminal

justice reform movement that you saw in a number of conservative states in the

early 2000s.

So it was high cost, unclear benefits to much longer sentences.

And even after COVID and the scourge of fentanyl that has, you know, been so problematic in so many states.

...