How to tip the scales for meaningful change.

Advocacy from the business community may be the additional push South Carolina lawmakers need to adopt needed criminal justice reform.

Chambers of commerce across the state are pushing for workforce expansion to provide businesses and industries in the state with the workers they need. That has led them to criminal justice reform because our justice system takes too many out of the workforce.

Quite simply, we lock up too many people in this nation, and we use criminal labels to hurt their ability to rejoin the workforce long after they are released from incarceration.

This is mostly due to the nation’s “war on drugs.” Too many drug offenders are locked up rather than sent to treatment, and the resulting criminal record inhibits their ability to find work after they leave prison.

The percentage of people imprisoned has been falling in South Carolina and the nation over the past few years, but it is still too high. There were almost 21,000 South Carolinians in prison in 2015, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

It is good to see Spartanburg County lawmakers leading the charge to fix these problems. State Reps. Josiah Magnuson and Steven Long are vocal in their advocacy for a bill that would allow offenders to have low-level, non-violent drug crimes expunged from their records after three years.

The bill would give those who have struggled with substance abuse a chance to start fresh once they have straightened out their lives. It would help them find sustainable employment and rebuild their careers.

As Magnuson told the Herald-Journal, the bill would give people who have made mistakes a “second chance.”

He said the bill is a step toward further criminal justice reform.

Such reform is needed. South Carolina needs to find other methods of punishment than incarceration. Putting people in prison is not only expensive for taxpayers, it carries high social costs. It destroys families and the livelihoods of those locked up. The harm done to families cascades down into future generations.

Prison should not be the default method of punishment for most crimes. Prison should be reserved for violent offenders who should be isolated from the rest of the population. We need to expand the use of fines, restitution, house arrest, supervised probation and community service for nonviolent offenders.

We can punish people in ways that preserve their families and their ability to rejoin the workforce after their punishment.

There have been many voices pushing, sometimes successfully, for this kind of reform within the General Assembly. But when business interests add their weight behind the call, it may tip the scales in favor of meaningful change.

South Carolina chamber officials have said that expanding the workforce is one of their top priorities. Reducing the social and economic costs of mass incarceration should be a priority for all state leaders.