At the Federalist, Rachel Lu grants that it's likely good politics, as I argued at National Review Online, for Donald Trump to oppose the Obama-led "criminal justice reform" efforts currently being debated in Congress. (Trump did in fact recently criticize such efforts.) She writes, however, that if conservatives oppose such legislation, they'll do so at a price: "We lose the opportunity to influence developing policy," as "staying involved in reform efforts is the best way to ensure the process isn't hijacked by an irresponsible social-justice agenda." She adds that "liberals and conservatives can sometimes work together for common goals, even if their motivations are somewhat different."
This is generally true in the abstract. And Lu is surely right that the criminal-justice system, like everything that the federal government touches, could benefit from some well-conceived reforms. But when, throughout the seven long years of the Obama presidency, have conservatives benefitted from "staying involved" with Obama so as to "influence" the legislation he is spearheading and thereby make it less bad? How did that work out on "comprehensive immigration reform"? (The answer is important, because the motivations of many Republican officeholders on the two issues are the same.)
For a counter-example, would conservatives, or the American people, have been better off if Obamacare had been passed with bipartisan support and made, perhaps, only 80 percent as bad thanks to the GOP's involvement? In truth, it's far better that Republicans never signed on and instead committed themselves to repealing and replacing Obamacare with a conservative alternative.
In short, it's crucial that conservatives advance specific policy proposals to re-limit government and revive our founding principles. But when the Obama administration is spearheading major legislation spanning hundreds if not thousands of pages, the best practice is to "just say no."
To be sure, if legislation were being spearheaded by conservatives, or if a less radical president were in the White House—the Obama administration is now calling young criminals "justice-involved individuals"—that would be another matter. (Think "welfare reform" in the mid-'90s, where compromise proved fruitful.) But at this point, it is rather naïve to believe that having conservatives/libertarians negotiate with liberals, who are leading the effort and have "different goals"—on a mostly liberal issue—will produce conservative-friendly reform.
One really need only look at a few of the key players to get a sense of what sort of results the proposed "criminal justice reform" legislation would likely produce: President Obama is spearheading it, while Senators Jeff Sessions, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Tom Cotton are all opposing it.
The last thing America needed was open-borders "immigration reform," and we don't need open-jails "criminal justice reform." What we need is to survive the remaining eight months of Obama's presidency without having non-liberals further aid and abet his liberal project of "fundamentally transforming the United States of America."