Some might ask, “Doesn’t that make you a Democrat?” The answer is no. While Democrats often recognize issues within the justice system, their solutions tend to involve expanding government control to try and fix problems that government itself created. The Libertarian approach is fundamentally different: instead of using the system to patch its own failures, we seek to remove the injustices altogether and address the deeper root causes of crime.
One clear solution is legalizing victimless crimes—acts that harm no one, yet still lead to arrests, incarceration, and permanent marks on people’s records. Another, less obvious but equally important, is addressing the economic pressures that drive people into crime in the first place. Government policies that fuel inflation and make it harder to afford basic necessities create an environment where desperate choices become inevitable for many.
Libertarianism isn’t just about reducing government for the sake of it—it’s about breaking the cycles of harm that government creates. Criminal justice reform is just one piece of that puzzle, but it’s a crucial one. A freer society is a more just society, and that’s the future we should be fighting for.