ArcaMax

Appropriately, former President Bill Clinton repudiated much of his own 1994 crime bill at the convention the next day. By sending even minor offenders to prison "for way too long," he said, "I signed a bill that made the problem worse -- and I want to admit it."

Now we have such diverse presidential candidates as Rand Paul and Ted Cruz on the right and Hillary Clinton on the left pushing back against mandatory minimum sentencing, among other inflators of prison populations.

By week's end presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett confirmed to me a Wall Street Journal account of the "open channel of communications" that she and the Obama White House have opened with the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, major funders of Republicans and other conservative causes.

"I am optimistic," she told me in an email, "that we have greater bipartisan support than ever before."

But now what? House Speaker John Boehner echoing the spirit of changing times, announced he would open the floor of the House to debate on sentencing reforms. That would include an increasingly popular bipartisan bill called the SAFE Justice Act. It would reduce mandatory minimums for low-level offenders, give more sentencing flexibility back to judges and create specialized courts for drug crimes that have had impressive success in many cities.

Those reforms and others in the bill are badly needed. Let's hope Congress' new spirit of bipartisan cooperation around shared crime-fighting goals will help this bill become law -- and kick the "new Jim Crow" out the door.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)

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