Notable new comments and commitments on criminal justice reform from GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan

This notable new article about a notable new speech by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, headlined “Paul Ryan just gave a remarkably candid speech and admitted one of his biggest policy mistakes,” has significantly increased my optimism about some form of federral sentencing reform moving forward in Congress this year.  Here are the details:

House Speaker Paul Ryan gave a candid speech about the “State of American Politics” on Wednesday, during which he admitted that he too hasn’t always lived up to what he believes is a high-standard of political discourse.

A member of the audience asked Ryan after the speech if he had been persuaded differently on any policy position he has held and was willing to admit he was wrong.

Ryan — who earlier repeated an apology he had made in 2014 for a past statement about America’s supposed “makers and takers” when discussing poverty in the country — said he had been wrong about criminal justice. “One of the things that I learned is that there are a lot of people who’ve been in prison that committed crimes that were not violent crimes,” he said. “Once they have that mark on their record, their future is really bleak.”

He said that, when he came to Congress in the late 1990s, he was a staunch supporter of tough crime laws. He admitted that both his own party and Democrats overcompensated at the time. The policies, he said, “end up ruining their lives and hurting their communities where we could’ve have alternative means of incarceration, instead of basically destroying someone’s life. I’ve become a late convert.”

“Criminal-justice reform is something I never thought of when I was younger,” he continued. “Be tough on crime, be tough on crime.” Ryan said criminal-justice reform bills would be brought to the House floor soon. He pledged to “advance this.”

“I didn’t necessarily know this before, but redemption is a beautiful thing. It’s a great thing,” he said. “Redemption is what makes this place work. We need to honor redemption. We need to make redemption something that is valued in our culture and our society and in our laws.”

Ryan’s candid comments on poverty and criminal-justice reform came at the end of a powerful speech about the current discourse in American politics, which he lamented would end up making Americans “distrust institutions” and “lose faith in government.”