Criminal Justice and Policing

Immediate action can help fight mass incarceration.

Mandatory minimums were created in part to relieve bad judges of their discretion. However, the pendulum has swung way too far and systematically harsh punishments prevent judges from diverting people from jail who might have made a mistake but still deserve a second chance.

Misdemeanors put people under the incarceration state’s thumb at an early age. This builds files that turn into longer sentences downstream in a way that disproportionately impacts communities of color and poor communities. Removing or dramatically reducing punishments for misdemeanors would reduce the chances of a kid getting exposed to juvenile detention and other factors that increase the likelihood of criminal activity later in life. 

There are other ways of responding to mistakes. Diversionary and rehabilitation programs as an alternative to prosecution can provide adolescents and other non-serious offenders with opportunities to fix their personal problems so that they can contribute to society. Evidence shows these programs are more effective than throwing a kid in jail — investing in such programs will free up resources to focus on more serious crimes.

We must incentivize states to reduce the size of their nonviolent prison population

We must start with state incarceration systems in order for reforms to have the greatest and widest-reaching impact– as it stands, nearly 88 percent of prison inmates are held at the state level. We must incentivize states to reduce their use of prison through a $20 billion grant program. The program, modeled after the Brennan Center for Justice’s proposal, would provide $20 billion over 10 years to states that reduce both crime and incar­cer­a­tion. This would encourage states to reshap­e state and local policy by, for example, eliminating mandatory minimums for nonviolent crimes.

We must create checks on prosecutorial power.

Prosecutors are some of the most powerful actors in America’s criminal justice system, operating with few if any checks on their decisions. We must ensure that prosecutors are held accountable for their actions by pushing to let the Justice Department investigate prosecutorial misconduct. We must also establish a task force, outside the Justice Department, that would investigate and dismantle problem areas in our justice system, as well as imple­ment­ more justice-oriented prosec­utorial prac­tices. We must also expand resources for public defenders, who are the ones often facing prosecutors in court.

We must pass the First Step Implementation Act

 We must pass the First Step Implementation Act, which would retroactively apply major sentencing reforms from the First Step Act of 2018 and provide judges in future cases with increased discretion to give sentences below mandatory minimums. The act would also implement major reforms for people sentenced as youth, including the opportunity to have lengthy sentences reconsidered.
First Step Implementation Act aside, there are other issues arising from the First Step Act of 2018 (FSA) that must be addressed. We must halt and conduct robust oversight over and investigations into the Bureau of Prisons’ implementation of the use of the “Prisoner Assessment Tool Targeting Estimated Risk and Needs” (PATTERN). Experts have cautioned that PATTERN is scientifically unverified and built on historically biased data resulting in bias against Black people, Latino people, poor people, unhoused people, and people with mental illness, yet another way our justice system fails marginalized groups. After robust PATTERN investigations are conducted we must introduce legislation to fix this false and discriminatory assessment.

We must end the costly and ineffective war on drugs, and legalize marijuana.

The misguided war on drugs has cost well over a trillion dollars and countless lives. Creating black markets instead of regulation has led drug-related crimes to account for about half of the total US incarcerated population. Both the Democratic and Republican Parties have been complicit in creating and perpetuating this problem.

Special interests such as the multibillion-dollar private prison and tobacco industries hold citizens hostage to draconian drug laws through bought-and-paid-for legislators while states across the country, including this state, struggle with a budget crisis. Police and citizens militarize while dirty needles clutter streets that children walk on to get to school. The problem is only getting worse: drug overdose death is the top killer of Americans under 50. Hepatitis C infection has increased 133% and HIV infection rates are rising as well. The opioid epidemic could claim half a million lives or more over the next decade.

The opioid epidemic is a direct result of outdated politics of fear, violence, and oppression. Treating addiction as a crime destroys families and communities. There is voluminous evidence that an empathetic medical approach saves lives and reduces addiction rates.

Congress refuses to reform drug laws or reschedule substances that actually help people. States with recreational cannabis saw an average of 125 fewer deaths per 100,000 due to overdose than states where pot is illegal. After medical marijuana legalization in 13 states, deaths associated with the use of opiate drugs fell. States that allowed some access to medical marijuana saw a steady decline in opiate-related overdose deaths, reaching 33% or more six years after legal implementation.

Public schools are closing and teacher wages are stagnating in anti-cannabis states. States like Colorado, however, use cannabis, a plant that has no recorded overdose deaths, to fund education. Congress has the legal ability to put policies in place that would save more than 60,000 lives per year — it has an obligation to act.

Descheduling and progressively legalizing recreational marijuana use is a clear and easy step in the right direction. The federal government ought to follow the lead of states that have embraced legal marijuana use. Legalizing marijuana must be done in conjunction with criminal justice reforms that commute and expunge the sentences of people convicted of drug offenses that have been decriminalized. Legalizing recreational marijuana use is pre-eminently sensible and retroactive criminal justice reform is key to closing one of the most destructive chapters in American law enforcement history.

Ending the war on drugs and reforming minor crimes will give communities a chance to heal. It will allow tens of thousands of people a chance to contribute to the economy rather than sitting in jail. The war on drugs and the crimes surrounding it are a failure — they must end so resources can be spent on solving serious crimes and rebuilding education opportunities for kids.

We must abolish the death penalty and juvenile life without parole sentencing.

Nationwide, the death penalty has cost the United States well over a trillion dollars. The death penalty has zero demonstrable effects in terms of reducing crime. States have increasingly resorted to creating their own (often dirty) execution drugs because other countries refuse to export theirs, resulting in grotesque and horrifying public displays of state-imposed death and torture.12 Next to China, Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia - the United States leads the world in executing its own citizens. 161 people have been exonerated nationwide. They were on death row, set to be put to death, even though they did not commit a crime. Efforts to use DNA to determine innocence are relatively recent, so statistics suggest there are many innocent Americans who have been executed by the government.

Death penalty cases also cost about a million dollars more than equivalent cases where the death penalty is not sought and frequently are later reduced to a lesser sentence. This means that money goes directly to the pockets of lawyers and the process, when it could be better spent elsewhere. The cost of a single death penalty case could cover 72 students for a year in a New York City public high school.
Juvenile life without parole is also a major problem. New York trails only California, Texas, Louisiana, and Georgia in the number of juvenile life sentences. This state has also zealously pursued life without parole sentences. Although New York does not have the death penalty, it is one of the four harshest states in the country, alongside California, Georgia, and Texas, in sentencing its citizens to life without parole. Nearly 20% of New York’s prison population carries a life sentence of some form, and one out of every nine of those convictions are for nonviolent crimes 82.7% of New York life sentences are non-white. Juveniles are sentenced to life without parole, and are punished well past the time that they are any danger to the public. Moreover, The high cost of incarceration deprives others of opportunities, such as education. Throwing away the keys on kids for the sake of punishment forces other kids out of classrooms.

Law enforcement should focus on keeping the public safe. Instead, law enforcement has strayed too far to slaking a thirst for vengeance. If the death penalty only exists to serve revenge, that revenge should be weighed against the cost. While some mistakes must be punished, the current system denies too many a second chance. Severe sentences like the death penalty and juvenile life without parole are punishments with astronomical costs that do not reduce crime. Both practices should be ended, leaving the freed up resources for schools.

We must pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act

The relationship between law enforcement and community is deeply broken. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act addresses a wide range of policies and issues regarding policing practices and law enforcement accountability. It increases accountability for law enforcement misconduct, restricts the use of certain policing practices, enhances transparency and data collection, and establishes best practices and training requirements. It enhances existing enforcement mechanisms to remedy violations by law enforcement. It also lowers the criminal intent standard—from willful to knowing or reckless—to convict a law enforcement officer for misconduct in a federal prosecution, limits qualified immunity as a defense to liability in a private civil action against a law enforcement officer, and grants administrative subpoena power to the Department of Justice (DOJ) in pattern-or-practice investigations. It establishes a framework to prevent and remedy racial profiling by law enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels. It also limits the unnecessary use of force and restricts the use of no-knock warrants, chokeholds, and carotid holds. The bill creates a national registry—the National Police Misconduct Registry—to compile data on complaints and records of police misconduct. It also establishes new reporting requirements, including on the use of force, officer misconduct, and routine policing practices (e.g., stops and searches). Finally, it directs DOJ to create uniform accreditation standards for law enforcement agencies and requires law enforcement officers to complete training on racial profiling, implicit bias, and the duty to intervene when another officer uses excessive force.

We must address the root cause of crime.

We cannot turn a blind eye to root causes of crime, such as poverty, home­less­ness, substance use/addiction, and mental health issues. By addressing the root causes of crime we can divert many Americans away from our criminal justice system entirely. We must tackle these issues by investing in social programs. We must end the school-to-prison pipeline and boost spending on education, housing, mental health care, addiction treatment, after-school programs, among other programs. We must implement programs to help with rehabilitation for those in prison and formerly incarcerated too. By addressing the crime at its root cause we can reduce crime - and incarceration rates- drastically in the long term.