Right On Crime is a national campaign of the Texas Public Policy Foundation that supports conservative solutions for reducing crime, restoring victims, reforming offenders, and lowering taxpayer costs. The movement was born in Texas in 2007 and has led the way in implementing conservative criminal justice reforms across the nation.

In 2007, Texas was faced with a crisis of overcrowded prisons and a projected $2 billion demand to remedy this problem.

Right On Crime supported an investment of $241 million into alternative sentencing, expanded access to parole and evidence-based programs aimed at improving the success rate for those reentering society or on supervision.

As a result, 11 prisons closed while simultaneously reducing crime to the lowest since the 1960s. Instead of spending $2 billion, Texas saved $4 billion.

Accomplishments

With 14 policy analysts, researchers, and law experts working across the nation, Right On Crime has advocated for proven reforms in 38 states. We’ve helped state legislatures pass comprehensive juvenile justice reform bills, overhaul civil asset forfeiture laws, establish oversight committees to ensure results and properly manage taxpayers’ money, close prisons, and divert savings back to the taxpayers and to recidivism-reducing programs.

Goals

Right On Crime insists that public safety policies, as any government service, should be evaluated on whether they produce the best possible results at the lowest possible cost. In contradiction to that principle, until recently the criminal justice system had expanded to become the second-fastest growing area of state budgets—trailing only Medicaid.

We demand cost-effective approaches that also enhance public safety. We want a prison system that incapacitates dangerous offenders and career criminals but which is not used in such a way that makes nonviolent, low-risk offenders a greater risk to the public upon release than before they entered.

A well-functioning criminal justice system enforces order and respect for every person’s right to property and life, and ensures that liberty does not lead to license.