Perhaps one of the most misleading comments in the past few years is that the United States is seeing a new crime wave develop. Politicians who have long pushed for lengthier prison sentences seized on increases in violent crime and homicides in 2015 and 2016 as justification to oppose legislation in Congress that would bring rehabilitative programming designed to reduce recidivism to federal prisons and modestly reform federal sentencing laws.

Over the past several months, there has a been a campaign against the FIRST STEP Act, H.R. 5682, waged by a handful of reactionaries whose mindset is better suited for the 1980s. It has been suspected, although not confirmed, that the talking points against the bill were coming from the Department of Justice (DOJ). We now know this to be an indisputable fact.

Liberty Kitty has learned the hard way that overcriminalization and excessive regulation ruins lives and hurts the economy. She was prevented from grooming neighborhood kittens because she did not have the time or money it would take to become licensed, and she was incarcerated for 7 cat years under a mandatory minimum sentencing law for a non-violent crime.

The national violent crime rate continued to decline in 2014, according to data released on Monday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The decline is part of trend dating back to the 1990's and researchers at the Brennan Center for Justice have attributed it to various socio-economic factors, including "growth in income and an aging population."

Media reports are stoking fears of a sharp rise in homicides in some cities in the United States. This has been used by some to advance the notion that crime is rising across the country. In fact, violent crime rates are at historic lows, according to the most recently available data, and there is no indication that there is a concerning national trend developing.

It is easy to look at the decline in violent crime rates and believe that lengthy prison sentences mandated by Congress were the catalyst. Unfortunately, Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley recently made this utterly misleading argument. But as the Brennan Center for Justice explained in a February 2015 study, crime rates fell because of "various social, economic, and environmental factors, such as growth in income and an aging population." Lengthy sentences that contributed to the sharp rise of prison populations had very little to do with it.

Last week, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) gave his support to the SAFE Justice Act, a comprehensive bill that would make a number of significant and substantive changes to federal sentencing and prison policies that have contributed the boom in federal corrections spending. Boehner's support is the most recent and, perhaps, most notable example of the growing consensus on Capitol Hill for justice reform.

The thing about civil asset forfeiture is it could affect anybody, at any time.