Steve was guest-hosting "The Diane Rehm Show" on NPR recently, and the topic was the nationwide upsurge in heroin addiction. The first caller was Stacy from New Albany, Indiana.

"It's funny," she said. "I'm listening to this show and I have a syringe of heroin in my hand."

She had gotten hurt in the military, explained Stacy, and the painkillers prescribed by her doctors led to her addiction. She uses heroin now because it is far cheaper than the legal drugs that caused her dependency.

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Partisan antagonism rules the capital, drowning out most attempts at constructive compromise. But on at least one issue, reasonable lawmakers from both parties strongly agree: reforming the criminal justice system to reduce the prison population and enable former inmates to become more productive members of society.

This growing consensus is both surprising and heartening, especially at a time when Congress can't seem to agree on anything else. Listen, for example, to Sen. Rand Paul, a libertarian Republican from Kentucky, and Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, who have co-sponsored legislation that would seal the records of juvenile offenders and give nonviolent adults a chance to expunge their criminal past.

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A senior federal judge had this to say recently about criminal justice in America: "Our resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our sentences too long."

The problem, he added, is a system of sentencing guidelines and mandatory criminal penalties enacted by Congress that simply does not work to reduce crime or protect citizens. "In too many cases, mandatory minimum sentences are unwise or unjust," the jurist explained.

These are not the words of some bleeding-heart liberal. In fact, they were spoken by Justice Anthony Kennedy, a reliably conservative voice on the Supreme Court who was appointed by Ronald Reagan.

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