Jared’s New Project: Prison Reform

Jared Kushner Image by Department of Defense

By Nathan Guttman January 10, 2018

President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has come under fire for overloading his portfolio with pretty much every issue on the American agenda, from pursuing Middle East peace to solving the opioid crisis to serving as an unofficial liaison to China and Mexico. Now, as Axios reports, it appears that Kushner has also been working behind the scenes on an ambitious prison reform program, which will be rolled out Thursday with a listening session hosted by the president.

The idea is to harness widespread bipartisan support to address the nation’s mass incarceration problem. Democrats have long supported the issue, and Republicans have come to view it positively since having fewer prisoners can cut government spending. The idea was hashed out in an informal dinner Kushner and Ivanka Trump hosted at their home for senators from both parties.

According to Axios, Kushner is personally interested in the issue of prison reform “given the former imprisonment of his father, developer Charles Kushner.”

Contact Nathan Guttman at [email protected] or on Twitter @nathanguttman

Nathan Guttman, staff writer, was the Forward’s Washington bureau chief. He joined the staff in 2006 after serving for five years as Washington correspondent for the Israeli dailies Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post. In Israel, he was the features editor for Ha’aretz and chief editor of Channel 1 TV evening news. He was born in Canada and grew up in Israel. He is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO