Remembering Jimmy Carter for his record on criminal justice reform

President Jimmy Carter has passed after a long battle with cancer. He was 100 years old.

In writing about a president’s role in advancing criminal justice reform for the Harvard Law Review in 2017, President Barack Obama noted that Carter was the last president—besides himself—to have left office with a federal prison population lower than when he took office.

During Carter’s short time as president (1977-1981), the number of federal inmates fell 34%, compared to a 10% drop during Obama’s eight years in office. (Donald Trump also reduced the federal prison population by ~5% from 2017-2019, based on the most recent available data.)

We assign punishment to fit the criminal and not the crime.

As president, Carter was also credited by many political prisoners for putting human rights at the center of American foreign policy and for saving their lives.

In his post-presidential life, Carter continued to speak out on criminal justice reform. He was a vocal opponent of the death penalty, and in 2011, he came out in support of ending the failed “war on drugs.” Writing in an op-ed in the New York Times, Carter wrote, “Drug policies here are more punitive and counterproductive than in other democracies, and have brought about an explosion in prison populations. … The single greatest cause of prison population growth has been the war on drugs, with the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses increasing more than twelvefold since 1980.”

Even before he was a candidate for president, Carter indicated his concern for those impacted by our nation’s criminal legal system. In 1974, when he was serving as governor of the state of Georgia, Carter gave a now famous impromptu speech on “Law Day” at the University of Georgia Law School, in which he explained that:

“[His] own sense of justice, he said, derived from two sources. The first was Reinhold Niebuhr and his mandate to establish justice in a sinful world, and the second was the venerable theologian Bob Dylan. It wasn’t until he heard Dylan’s ‘I Ain’t Gonna Work on Maggie’s Farm No More,’ Carter said, that he began to appreciate the plight of the poor, especially tenant farmers.

“Carter lamented that ‘the powerful and the influential in our society shape the laws and have a great influence on the legislature or the Congress.’ The status quo serves their interest. …

“Carter noted that the prison population consisted overwhelmingly of poor people, the only ones who serve time. Part of the problem, he suggested, is that ‘we assign punishment to fit the criminal and not the crime.’ He concluded his remarks by sounding the populist theme that he was already honing for his presidential bid. Any hope for the future, Carter said, lay in ‘the combined wisdom and courage and commitment and discernment of the common ordinary people.’”

JustLeadershipUSA sends its thoughts and prayers to President Carter’s family and loved ones and to the nation he served as it grieves the loss of one of its most respected leaders.