Help us to thank you for prison reform, Mr. President

Thank you, Mr. President.

In this season of giving thanks, I want to express my gratitude to President Donald Trump for softening his longstanding knee-jerk lock-'em-up attitude toward criminal justice, whether he admits to softening or not.

The president has vigorously endorsed a proposed criminal justice bill that doesn't stink. That's saying something for a guy who famously thought the Central Park Five, young black and Hispanic males wrongly accused in the 1989 assault and rape of a jogger, got off easy, even though another man confessed to the crime.

As president, Trump has called for Chicago to return to aggressive stop-and-frisk policies, which New York successfully abandoned under Democratic Mayor Bill De Blasio, and joked in a speech to police officers that it was OK to bump handcuffed suspects' heads when putting them into patrol cars. Not nice.

But it was a very different Donald Trump who last week enthusiastically endorsed the bipartisan First Step Act, which he described as "reasonable sentencing reforms while keeping dangerous and violent criminals off our streets."

Send him the bill, he said to lawmakers, and "I'll be waiting with a pen."

Good. The bill takes important steps to reduce the number of elderly and other low-risk inmates, many of whom were swept up in the mass-incarceration policies that dominated the 1980s and 1990s.

The comprehensive First Step Act builds on a measure that passed the Republican-controlled House by an impressive 360-59 in May. The new package includes language that lowers mandatory minimum sentences for drug felonies, including reducing the "three strikes" penalty from life behind bars to 25 years -- although Democrats had to give up a proposal to make that provision retroactive.

Language added in the Senate would retroactively apply the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 to reduce the disparity in sentencing guidelines between crack and powder cocaine offenses, a disparity that disproportionately has penalized more black and Hispanic offenders than whites.

Among other changes, the bill would allow judges more discretion to issue shorter sentences for low-level crimes. In sharp contrast to the panic over the crack epidemic and drug gang wars that produced a prison population explosion in the 1980s and 1990s, the proposed legislation exemplifies the cooler heads and more rational arguments that have emerged since violent crime began to decline in the mid-1990s.

The bill offers something for the left and the right. Liberals see new opportunities to free inmates who are least likely to offend again. Conservatives appreciate this big opportunity to reduce the cost to taxpayers of housing the world's largest prison population.

What's in it for Trump, the transactional president? Let's make a list:

1. He has been urged to support prison reforms by his son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose father served time for federal financial offenses.

2. Trump, Kushner and other family members under scrutiny from special counsel Robert Mueller may well have found a new interest in federal prison conditions.

3. Trump may feel encouraged by the praise he received after granting a request by Kim Kardashian West to commute the life sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, a black great-grandmother who was serving a life sentence for non-violent drug charges.

Much like President Richard Nixon softened his redbaiting history by opening diplomatic doors to China, it wouldn't hurt Trump's legacy as a self-described "law and order" conservative to enact sensible, bipartisan sentencing reforms.

Yet, the bill still faces its biggest obstacle in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Weighing the bill against other legislative priorities, the Kentucky Republican told Trump there probably are too few legislative days to get a vote on the bill before the congressional calendar ends on Dec.14, according to The New York Times.

Too bad. If the bill is delayed until the new Congress comes in, it may well face too much opposition from the incoming Democratic-controlled House, many of whom would rather reject half a loaf, even if it means no loaf at all.

Of course, President Trump could do a lot to move up the priority of that vote, if he turns on his powers of persuasion. Here's an opportunity to show all of us how good of a dealmaker he really is.

Then maybe I'll all have something else to be thankful for, Mr. President.

========

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