Kochs’ Support For Tough-On-Crime Walker Exposes Criminal Justice Reform Sham

July 24, 2015

With every report that the Koch brothers can’t get enough of tough-on-crime enforcer Scott Walker, their criminal justice reform charade crumbles.

For months it’s been well-publicized that Scott Walker will be the likely recipient of hundreds of millions of Koch dollars this election. The New York Times reported on David Koch’s glowing praise of Walker at an April fundraiser:

“‘When the primaries are over and Scott Walker gets the nomination,’ Mr. Koch told the crowd, the billionaire brothers would support him, according to a spokeswoman.”

And that wasn’t all:

“Two people who attended the event said they heard Mr. Koch go even further, indicating that Mr. Walker should be the Republican nominee.”

The Koch-Walker affection is mutual. The Kochs have been big supporters of Walker and his far right agenda for years — and he’s reciprocated, making their political agenda his own.


Well, except on criminal justice reform. And that’s really calling into question how committed the Kochs are to the cause they claim to hold so dearly.
Throughout his 22 years in Wisconsin politics, Scott Walker has made a name for himself as an inflexibly tough-on-crime lawmaker and — since becoming governor — enforcer-in-chief. Here’s a sampling of Scott Walker’s tough-on-crime record, as reported by Yahoo News:

“Between 1997 and 1998, Walker wrote or co-sponsored more than two dozen bills limiting parole, increasing prison time for a variety of offenses, expanding the definition of crimes, and other criminal justice changes. His crowning achievement was the Truth in Sentencing Act, a bill that effectively ended the parole system in the state of Wisconsin. The law has expanded the prison population in the state and is partly responsible for the fact that the prison budget outpaced higher education spending for the first time in state history in 2011.”

Two dozen bills in just two years.

And Walker hasn’t warmed to criminal justice reform since then, either. In fact, “Walker’s penchant for punishment has continued even as the public policy debate has shifted toward reform,” Yahoo’s Liz Goodwin reports.

This is nothing new from the Kochs, who have a history of claiming they want to reform the criminal justice system and end mass incarceration, while simultaneously propping up candidates who perpetuate it.

The Kochs are working hard to present themselves as leading criminal justice reform advocates — they say they’re pro-reform. They say they want to fix the system, but where they spend most of their money says otherwise 

Paid for by American Bridge 21st Century Foundation