The Atlantic Magazine Article
Brave Thinkers
Jim Webb Named One of Atlantic's Brave
Thinkers
October 13, 2009
Also Available on the Atlantic's Website
For more than 150 years, the Atlantic has told the stories of people who commit acts of moral and intellectual bravery by espousing unpopular or controversial positions. In a special issue of the magazine, the editors have chosen 27 leaders - from business and politics to science and media - who embody this great tradition today. These are people who are risking careers, reputations, and fortunes to advance ideas that upend an established order.
Name: Jim Webb
Job: Senator from Virginia
Why he’s brave: He’s taking on the nation’s neglected prison
system.
Quote: “I think you can be a law-and-order leader and still
understand that the criminal justice system as we understand it
today is broken.”
After squeaking into his seat in 2006, Webb
became an activist for prison reform—an issue almost universally
unpopular among voters, especially in a tough-on-crime state like
Virginia. He introduced a bill in March that would establish a
commission to review the nation’s prison system. A small step,
certainly. But he’s taking on public apathy and a thriving
privatized-prison industry that houses nearly 10 percent of federal
and state prisoners and lobbies politicians with vigor. Webb has
called our prison system a “national disgrace,” and he’s right: the
U.S. incarcerates 2.3 million people (25 percent of the planet’s
prisoners), and monitors another 5 million on probation or parole
(more than 60 percent of whom will end up back in the clink). Huge
numbers of inmates are mentally ill and more than 20 percent have
been sexually abused while locked up; meanwhile the number of drug
offenders behind bars (where they take up scarce space and
resources) has increased by 1,200 percent since 1980. By tackling
prison reform as a freshman senator, Webb has shown he possesses two
things vanishingly rare in Congress: a conscience and a spine.
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