Two prominent conservatives over the last week have spoken out on the need to hack away at our country’s system of mass incarceration — putting the lie to the notion that criminal justice reform is purely a bleeding-heart pursuit.

Here’s the National Review’s Rich Lowry:

This vast prison-industrial complex has succeeded in reducing crime but is a blunt instrument. Prison stays often constitute a graduate seminar in crime, and at the very least, the system does a poor job preparing prisoners to return to the real world. Since 95 percent of prisoners will eventually be released, this is not a minor problem…

We have proved in the past several decades that we can lock a lot of people up. The challenge now is if we can do it more humanely and intelligently and, ultimately, create less work for the prison-industrial complex.

And Eli Lehrer of R Street:

The costs of incarceration — both financial and societal — are also becoming increasingly clear. The policies that were appropriate for a nation that had one of the highest crime rates among developed Western countries are not necessarily appropriate for a nation that now has one of the lowest.

Just as conservatives once led the way toward the tougher sentencing rules and other policies that increased imprisonment rates, they should lead the way in sensibly shrinking the prison population.

Without casting aside the ethos of individual responsibility that has led to so many Americans being locked up…the United States can and should reduce its prison population and make conditions more humane for those who serve time behind bars. Such reforms, implemented wisely and cautiously, can mitigate the tremendous negative consequences of the explosion in the number of Americans in prison. The United States can remain safe and, simultaneously, undo much of the social damage that results from large-scale incarceration.

I’d quibble with Lowry and Lehrer over how much mass incarceration has reduced crime — research by Bruce Western suggests it’s responsible for only 10% of the crime reduction we’ve seen over the past two decades, and there’s evidence the system is actually creating crime by creating a violent black market for drugs and decimating neighborhoods. But Lowry and Lehrer get points for being willing to push their constituency. So does Newt Gingrich, who baffled Anderson Cooper last month by acknowledging that race infects the criminal justice system. As do the folks on Right on Crime and Prison Fellowship, who have been banging this drum for a while now.

The political space is now open for progressives, liberals, and libertarians to get adamant and make mass incarceration a high priority issue.