“Once upon a time (last year), there was purportedly growing bipartisan consensus in Congress that mass incarceration needed to end. The resulting criminal justice reform legislation, however, ran into big trouble thanks to opposition from unreconstructed anti-crime warriors in the mold of Senator Tom Cotton, who says things like ‘it’s the victims of crime who will bear the costs of this dangerous experiment in criminal leniency.’ So in classic Congressional fashion the bill is being deformed to attract more support.”