This section discusses the various judicial, legislative and
legal strategies the Right uses to maintain and strengthen a
conservative criminal justice and legal system. The Right has
capitalized on a variety of methods to secure support for its
ideas and programs. This process, commonly known as "building
infrastructure," has developed over the past 25 years to create
an impressive web of supports that buttress a right-wing agenda.
This section addresses the structural elements that support the
Right's criminal justice agenda. The most common method of
codifying political ideas is to secure the successful passage of
supportive legislation. A surefire way to do this is to gain
strength in state and federal legislative bodies. The passage of
laws like Truth in Sentencing statutes and the USA PATRIOT Act
illustrates the Right's political power in creating harsher
penalties and compromised civil rights in the name of public
safety by mobilizing majorities of legislators. Another
successful approach has been to h