Peter Navarro Now Agrees With Democrats on Prison Reform
After serving time, he's seen the light.
- Ron Filipkowski
- 12 hours ago
Former Trump Trade Advisor Peter Navarro is now an advocate for prison reform after his experience serving time in federal prison for Contempt of Congress.
Navarro, who never cared at all about criminal justice issues or prison reform in the past, now sounds like a thoughtful Democrat who cares about people. In an interview today shortly after his release from prison, Navarro complained that sentences were too harsh for non-violent offenders:
"There's pushback from some on the hard-right about, 'Oh, we can't be soft on crime.' But they didn't understand, it's not a soft on crime thing. If you keep people too long in jail, you actually increase the risk of crime when they get out. They have fewer skills, they get more angry, they haven't been able to take care of their family, they're more desperate."
You don't say?
"When we think about the criminal justice system, which I've been inside of now and I understand this better ... the problem we have right now in the prison system is that the sentences are wildly, wildly over."
Navarro also said that the cost of housing non-violent inmates it too high - an estimated $60,000 per year per inmate, and the cost of moving someone to a halfway house or home confinement is half that. (Of course, Trump's DOJ opposed that for Michael Cohen). He says this not only benefits society as a whole, it will also save the taxpayers money. Hm.
Navarro also complained about asset forfeitures and court fines making it difficult or impossible for the families of inmates to survive on the outside while their loved ones are incarcerated: "The practical result of that is that the wives and kids, many of them are on food stamps, housing subsidies, Medicaid ..."
Sounds like a liberal to me.
Navarro then complained about the qualify of the food, and that prisons are overcrowded, aren't sanitary, and don't have proper ventilation so when covid or another illness is introduced into the prison population it spreads through all of them rapidly:
"As soon as one person had covid, within two weeks everyone had it. When you're in there eating bad food, no medical care, in conditions where there's not adequate ventilation ... you're gonna get sick."
It appears in some respects Navarro is a changed man. At least as far as prison reform is concerned. We will see if he follows up on any of this with real action and advocacy. He says that it is plan, so we will see.
Based on his performance at the RNC convention, not much else has changed about his views on other topics - like his love for Donald Trump.
