Everybody likes to think that they would have been the person in favor of criminal justice reform in 1989. Some presumably would because there were people taking that position, but it's hard to stress how few there were and how unlikely it is you'd be one of them.
This is important. In hindsight, criminal justice looks like a good guy-bad guy issue. In reality, the "tough on crime" coalition was broad. Some of the pressure came from those in the black community who felt the police only cared about crime outside of black neighborhoods