Cory Booker, a Democratic senator from New Jersey, introduced a bill on Tuesday that would legalize marijuana at the federal level. Titled the Marijuana Justice Act of 2017, the legislation aims to lessen the impact of marijuana arrests and convictions, which disproportionately affect minority and low-income communities. The bill also establishes a fund to invest in community programs and institutions.

“Our country’s drug laws are badly broken and need to be fixed,” Booker said in a press release accompanying the bill’s announcement. “They don’t make our communities any safer – instead they divert critical resources from fighting violent crimes, tear families apart, unfairly impact low-income communities and communities of color, and waste billions in taxpayer dollars each year.”

While marijuana is fully legal in eight states and D.C., it is barred at the federal level, classified as a Schedule I substance, joining heroin, LSD, and ecstasy. Booker’s bill would declassify marijuana, effectively legalizing it.

The legislation also would penalize states that have not legalized marijuana and have “a disproportionate arrest rate or a disproportionate incarceration rate for marijuana offenses.” Such states would not receive federal funding for constructing or staffing prisons and jails. Other funds would be withheld as well.

The Marijuana Justice Act calls for retroactive expungement, community investment pool + state incentives to change their laws. Interesting. https://t.co/aIs0WCgj2l

— Ava DuVernay (@ava) August 1, 2017

 A prominent advocate for criminal justice reform, Booker also seeks to remedy the ills brought to minority communities by the War on Drugs. The bill would retroactively expunge federal marijuana convictions, and allow prisoners’ sentences to be reviewed. Marijuana arrests make up more than half of all drug arrests. And a 2013 ACLU report showed that in 2010, a black American was four times as likely as a white American to be arrested for marijuana possession.

Booker, in a statement on his Facebook page, said his bill “is the right thing to do for public safety, and will help reduce our overflowing prison population.” The legislation would create a Community Reinvestment Fund “to establish a grant program to reinvest in communities most affected by the war on drugs.” Grants would go toward job training and reentry programs, public libraries, youth programs, and health education programs.

Erik Altieri, executive director of marijuana reform group NORML, applauded Booker’s bill. In a statement, he said: “Not only is it imperative we end our failed experiment of marijuana prohibition, we must also ensure justice for those who suffered most under these draconian policies.”

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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There are few issues in Washington that attract as much bipartisan support as criminal justice reform. Across the yawning political divide, leaders have stressed the need to reform America’s sentencing laws, treatment options, and prison conditions. Billionaire donors–from the libertarian Koch brothers to the liberal George Soros–have opened their coffers to find solutions.

America is the world’s foremost jailer, especially when it comes to women–nearly one-third of all female prisoners on the planet can be found in a U.S. facility. Congress, governors, NGOs, and leaders in the private sector are beginning to recognize the importance of tackling the issue of female incarceration, and its debilitating effects on women, children, and families.

“Biggest Cancer”

On July 11, a group of Democratic senators–Cory Booker (NJ), Elizabeth Warren (MA), Richard Durbin (IL), and Kamala Harris (CA)–introduced the Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act, which proposes “common-sense reforms to how the federal prison system treats incarcerated women,” according to a press release.

Female incarceration is the “biggest cancer on our body politic,” Booker said this week at an event at Washington D.C.’s Newseum called, “Women Unshackled.” Discussions with formerly incarcerated women, he said, shed a light on the issues they face before, during, and after incarceration, and led him to draft a policy to address some of those problems.

The legislation seeks to end the practice of placing incarcerated women who are pregnant–three percent of female prisoners in federal prisons are pregnant upon admission–in solitary confinement. It would also ensure all feminine hygiene products are provided free of charge, ban the shackling of pregnant women (including while they are giving birth), and allow overnight visits to children whose mothers are imprisoned.

“We’ve been offered a false choice on criminal justice policy,” Harris, also speaking at the “Women Unshackled” program, said. “A choice that suggests one is either soft on crime or tough on crime, instead of asking are we smart on crime.” As it pertains to incarcerated women in particular, she said, “we need to be smarter.”

Harris’ reform efforts continued on Thursday, when she and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a bail reform bill, the Pretrial Integrity and Safety Act. In an op-ed published in the New York Times on Thursday, the two senators wrote:

Whether someone stays in jail or not is far too often determined by wealth or social connections, even though just a few days behind bars can cost people their job, home, custody of their children — or their life… Our bail system is broken. And it’s time to fix it.

Their legislation, Harris and Paul wrote, “empowers states to build on best practices” and “holds states accountable.” It also encourages better data collection to “help guarantee that reforms yield better outcomes.”

Generational Effects

Women are the fastest growing segment of America’s incarcerated population, rising by over 700 percent from 1980 to 2014. As of 2014, American jails house roughly 215,000 women, the vast majority of whom are behind bars for non-violent, low-level drug offenses. According to a 2016 report by the Vera Institute of Justice, a criminal justice non-profit, nearly 80 percent of incarcerated women are mothers–65 percent have children under 18 years old.

“An incarcerated woman means that a family will be impacted,” Harris said. “And its effects can be generational; what impacts a woman, impacts a child.”

Booker framed the impacts of America’s female incarceration rates as a “stain” on the country’s founding values of freedom, justice, and dignity: “Do we take pregnant women and empower them? No, we shackle them, put them in solitary confinement,” he said. “This is a stain upon everything we say we stand for.”

Harris saw the effects of female incarceration up close as California’s attorney general, a position she held from 2011 to early 2017.

“If someone commits a serious and violent offense,” she said, “there is no question they need to be held accountable and there must be severe, swift, and certain consequence.” But the vast majority of imprisoned women have been convicted of non-violent crimes, and thousands of others are jailed, awaiting trial. Some wait years.

In addition to legislation, like the recent bill Harris co-sponsored with Booker, Warren, and Durbin, she said a number of steps can be taken to make the system more just. For one, Harris believes preventive measures should be undertaken to stem some of the “seemingly small issues now” that might lead to poor choices down the road.

Harris said education, beginning with elementary school, is vital to future success: “a child going without an education is tantamount to a crime,” she said. Harris also sees “untreated, undiagnosed, and undetected trauma” as the seed that could lead to future incarceration–eight in 10 incarcerated women have experienced abuse.

Bipartisan Issue, State-Level Solutions

Female incarceration is an issue that has gained traction from conservatives, liberals, and libertarians alike. The federal government is following the lead of states like Texas, Georgia, Utah, and Kentucky in addressing criminal justice reform. One Republican governor, Mary Fallon of Oklahoma, is paving the path forward with innovative programs and aggressive policies.

“[There are] things that can be done on the state level,” Fallon said during the “Women Unshackled” event’s keynote address. For instance, she said, states can “prioritize treatment for women who are pregnant, for women who have children, and provide those services in a targeted way to meet their very special needs.”

Under her governorship–a mantle she has held since 2011–Oklahoma, which has the highest female incarceration rate in the nation, has opened residential treatment facilities. It has implemented community-based substance abuse programs. Fallon stressed the importance of public-private partnerships in keeping women out of prison.

Fallon highlighted a program called Women in Recovery, an “intensive outpatient alternative for women facing long prison sentences for non-violent, drug-related offenses,” she said. And in a strategy that Fallon said is the first of its kind, Oklahoma “pays for success.” The state essentially provides additional funding to private programs for each patient who is successfully treated.

Fallon is far from the only Republican to recognize criminal justice reform, and female incarceration in particular, as a pressing issue. Representative Doug Collins (R-GA), also speaking at the event in D.C., presented criminal justice reform as a moral imperative for the entire country.

“If we as a country value life as much as we say we do, then we value all life, even those who have made mistakes, and have went through the incarceration system,” he said. Second chances, he said, begin by seeing jails as places to “put people in we are scared of, not those that we are mad at.”

Last year, Congress signed into law the Comprehensive Justice and Mental Health Act, which Collins introduced in 2016. The legislation proposed reforms for how people with mental health issues are treated, diagnosed, and sentenced, “rather than treat prisons and jails as psychiatric facilities,” Collins said in a statement when the bill was introduced.

Now, Collins is focused on finding ways “for people to have better choices,” he said at the “Women Unshackled” event. Opportunities must be found to allow people to “recover from” mistakes, he said, “and to restore families, and to restore lives, and restore hope.”

“Hope is not a partisan issue,” Collins added. “It is for those who need to know that somebody cares.”

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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A years-long, largely bi-partisan effort to reform the criminal justice system in the U.S., the world’s preeminent jailer, is being undermined by Jeff Sessions. On Friday, the attorney general issued a memo directing federal prosecutors to “charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense,” with the “goal of achieving just and consistent results in federal cases.”

Sessions’ memo, issued after weeks of harsh-on-crime rhetoric, effectively reverses a 2013 memo issued by then-attorney general Eric Holder, which directed prosecutors to take a case-by-case approach, and to seek the toughest sentences only for violent offenders. The memo returns the Justice Department to a sentencing approach similar to the one taken by the George W. Bush Administration.

“This is a key part of President Trump’s promise to keep America safe,” Sessions said on Friday, after releasing the short memo to the public. “We know that drugs and crime go hand in hand,” he said. “Drug trafficking is an inherently violent business.” Sessions, who spent the height of the 1980s crack epidemic as a prosecutor, added U.S. attorneys “deserve to be un-handcuffed and not micromanaged from Washington.”

According to the Coalition for Public Safety, an organization that partners with both progressive and conservative groups to push criminal justice reform, there are upwards of two million people incarcerated in the U.S., a 500 percent increase over the past 30 years. One quarter of the world’s entire prisoner population is in the U.S. In a statement in response to Sessions’ memo, the group’s president Steve Hawkins, along with U.S. Justice Action Network’s Holly Harris, said:

Research has shown, time and again, that lengthy prison terms for lower-level offenders do not increase public safety. Federal prosecutors have a responsibility to enforce the law firmly, but need the flexibility to do so in ways that will best serve their communities and protect public safety. That’s why we have and continue to support congressional efforts to reform sentencing.

“Locking up people who don’t pose a threat to public safety is a waste of taxpayer money and law enforcement resources, and it doesn’t deter crime,” they added. Congress failed to pass a bipartisan reform bill last year, despite widespread support, and now, with the Justice Department’s shift in tone and official policy, a federal effort is less likely. States, even Republican bastions with high prison populations, are now leading the charge to reform how non-violent drug offenders are punished and treated.

While there are some Republicans who oppose a more lenient approach to incarceration, many prominent Republican senators–and activists like the Koch brothers–back reform. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), a prominent conservative advocate for criminal justice reform, wrote on Twitter on Friday: “To be tough on crime we have to be smart on crime. That is why criminal justice reform is a conservative issue”

Sessions’ memo does allow for “circumstances in which good judgement would lead a prosecutor to conclude that a strict application” of the new policy is “not warranted.” Holder, who was the attorney general from 2009 to 2015, responded to Sessions’ directive in a statement. “This absurd reversal is driven by voices who have not only been discredited but until now have been relegated to the fringes of this debate,” he said.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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More than 50 organizations affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement have outlined a list of demands for the first time on Monday. According to the organization, the demands, which include an “end to the war against Black people,” come in response to “the sustained and increasingly visible violence against Black communities in the U.S. and globally.”

The agenda specifically outlines six key demands related to police and criminal justice reform, with at least 38 recommendations on how address them. The demands include:

• An end to the war against Black people.
• Reparations for past and continuing harms.
• Investments in the education, health, and safety of Black people, and divestment from exploitative forces including prisons, fossil fuels, police, surveillance, and exploitative corporations.
• Economic justice for all.
• A world where those most impacted in our communities control the laws, institutions, and policies that are meant to serve us.
• Independent Black political power and Black self-determination in all areas of society.

Michaela Brown, a spokeswoman for Baltimore Bloc, one of the group’s partner organizations, said in a statement to TIME, “We seek radical transformation, not reactionary reform.” Brown added,

As the 2016 election continues, this platform provides us with a way to intervene with an agenda that resists state and corporate power, an opportunity to implement policies that truly value the safety and humanity of black lives, and an overall means to hold elected leaders accountable.

Under the demand to “end the war against Black people,” the organization’s recommendations include: an end to capital punishment, the demilitarization of law enforcement, and an end to the use of past criminal history to determine eligibility for housing, education, licenses, voting, loans, employment, and other services and needs. The agenda states:

Until we achieve a world where cages are no longer used against our people we demand an immediate change in conditions and an end to public jails, detention centers, youth facilities and prisons as we know them. This includes the end of solitary confinement, the end of shackling of pregnant people, access to quality healthcare, and effective measures to address the needs of our youth, queer, gender nonconforming and trans families.

Under another demand for “community control,” the group recommends an end to the privatization of education, participatory budgeting at the local, state and federal level, and direct democratic community control of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, “ensuring that communities most harmed by destructive policing have the power to hire and fire officers, determine disciplinary action, control budgets and policies, and subpoena relevant agency information.”

The large policy overhaul comes after the conclusion of both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, and almost two years after white former police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri. It will be interesting to see if and how the presidential candidates address these demands over the course of the election.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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At the end of last July, the Obama Administration selected 67 colleges to participate in an experimental pilot program through the Department of Education (DOE) to extend Pell Grants to certain incarcerated individuals. The experimental program will impact up to 12,000 inmates working to earn a post-secondary degree. 141 correctional institutions will take part in the Second Chance Pell Grant program. 

This monumental move in criminal justice policy marks the first time inmates will be eligible for Pell Grants in over 20 years, when the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 explicitly banned grants to any incarcerated individuals. Though that bill is still in place, the new pilot program is granted through experimentation under the Higher Education Act.

As for the grants, they function in the same way as grants for non-incarcerated students. Federal Pell Grants are available to students seeking a college degree with demonstrated financial need. The grant is proportional to the student’s income with a maximum amount of $5,815 for the 2016-2017 academic year.

The initiative follows a slew of research in recent years showing that educational rehabilitation for inmates sharply decreases recidivism, increases social capital, and aids re-entry into society. One such 2013 study found that individuals who participated in correctional education were 43 percent less likely to recidivate in the three years after release than individuals who didn’t participate in education. Further, the program serves individuals marked for release within the next five years, the demographic educational programming will benefit most.

But the program has been met with some public disapproval, largely because some believe that confronting the student debt epidemic in the U.S. and extending grant programs for traditional students should receive higher priority than funding education for incarcerated students.

Nevertheless, the DOE has made their priorities and intentions clear with regards to the intersection of criminal justice and education. In a report released this month, the DOE pointed out that in the last 25 years average spending on PK-12 education has increased around 100 percent, whereas correctional spending has increased around 300 percent. That figure is even higher in states like Texas, where correctional spending has increased by 850 percent during the same time period. 

Investing in education is a cost effective method for reducing crime. The DOE report points to a study which found that a 10 percent increase in high school graduation rates could result in an approximately nine percent decrease in arrest rates leading to drastically fewer inmates and prison costs.

As a snapshot example, it cost the city of New York an average $167,731 for each inmate held in a correctional institution in 2013. By reducing arrests and thus incarceration, correctional institutions can re-allocate greater funds towards rehabilitative services like vocational training and higher education aided by Pell Grants.

For now, the Pell Grant extension to inmates is experimental, but marks an important shift away toward rehabilitative approach to inmates within the U.S. criminal justice system. A grant program that was created to allow students to go to college who otherwise could not has a clear purpose in correctional institutions where inmates may have their only chance to pursue a college degree.

Ashlee Smith

Ashlee Smith is a Law Street Intern from San Antonio, TX. She is a sophomore at American University, pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Journalism. Her passions include social policy, coffee, and watching West Wing. Contact Ashlee at ASmith@LawStreetMedia.com.

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This Thursday, President Obama will become the first sitting president to visit a federal prison. He is scheduled to visit with inmates and officials at the El Reno Federal Correction Institute near Oklahoma City. This is just the latest of many steps taken by the Obama administration in an attempt to reform the American prison system.

At the prison, Obama will also conduct an interview with VICE that will be a part of a documentary airing this fall on HBO focusing on America’s broken criminal justice system. The Federal Bureau of Prisons website confirms that El Reno is a medium security federal correctional institution, housing more than 1,000 inmates. Another 248 inmates reside at an adjacent minimum-security camp.

The visit is a part of a week focusing on criminal justice reform, beginning with a speech on Tuesday for the NAACP’s annual convention in Philadelphia. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said that Obama will:

Outline the unfairness in much of our criminal justice system, highlight bipartisan ideas for reform, and lay out his own ideas to make our justice system fairer, smarter, and more cost-effective while keeping the American people safe and secure.

Obama has a long history of speaking out about prison system reform. The White House has posted a video of conversation between the president and David Simon, writer of the HBO television show, “The Wire,” in which Obama discusses the massive trend toward incarceration, for even nonviolent drug offenders, which began in the 1990s. He said:

Folks go in at great expense to the state, many times trained to become more hardened criminals while in prison, [and] come out and are basically unemployable.

In Obama’s State of the Union Speech in January, he highlighted criminal justice reform, connecting it to high profile clashes between law enforcement and minority communities.

While there have been years of discussion on the issue, we are just now really starting to see a change With 2.3 million Americans behind bars, the United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. Despite containing less than five percent of the world’s population, the United States incarcerates nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners. With a criminal justice system that is marred by racial and class based disparities, these instances of inequality are visible at every step of the criminal process. They often lead to wrongful convictions and inconsistent sentencing that disproportionately affect people of color and low-income individuals. There are also many allegations of racial profiling, which specifically targets minority individuals of color. Finally, the criminal justice system has massive hidden economic and societal costs that reverberate throughout society, affecting us all.

The Executive isn’t the only branch getting in on criminal justice reform. The House has also introduced a new bipartisan bill–the SAFE Justice Act–proposing to reduce the United States prison population, while also cutting crime and saving money. The bill proposes a broad set of reforms to the U.S. justice system, including increasing the use of sentencing alternatives such as probation of certain non-violent offenders; encouraging judicial districts to operate mental health, veteran and other problem-solving courts; and prioritizing prison space for violent and “career” criminals by expanding the release of geriatric and terminally ill offenders. It would also expand earned-time policies to inmates who participate in programs to reduce their recidivism rates, introduce mental health and de-escalation training programs for prison staff, and require performance-based contracting for halfway houses, among other reforms.

The SAFE Justice Act has a lot of potential, as does Obama’s push for reform. But there’s so much more to be done, including a need to change the way we perceive felons. They are so quickly written off as criminals, murderers, or drains on society. They are separated from the rest of society as soon as they are released. So many are falsely convicted or just wait in prisons for months or years before they can even receive a trial. Changes to the system don’t just involve policies–they involve redefining how we treat prisoners as well. So while Obama is taking steps in the right direction by visiting prisons and speaking out about equality, there remains a long road ahead.

Angel Idowu

Angel Idowu is a member of the Beloit College Class of 2016 and was a Law Street Media Fellow for the Summer of 2015. Contact Angel at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Criminal justice reform in the United States is long overdue as prisons are overcrowded, racial profiling remains a problem, and rehabilitation practices are often overshadowed by questionable “tough on crime” policies. After high-profile incidents of police brutality began circulating media outlets, the push for criminal justice reform has become greater than ever. Recently, both Republicans and Democrats decided to work together to transform the American criminal justice system, announcing the creation of a bipartisan coalition that would partner with non-governmental organizations and advocacy groups to craft and implement reform. The media called this left and right-wing union an “unlikely alliance,” emphasizing ideological and political differences between the two parties, and highlighting the fact that bipartisanship doesn’t happen very often on Capitol Hill. The question remains whether this bipartisan coalition can transform American criminal justice practices into a more fair, unbiased, and swift system? Read on to learn more about the current bipartisan efforts to reform the criminal justice system in America.

How is bipartisan criminal justice reform coming along?

The Coalition for Public Safety

One of the first  tangible results of this consensus culminated in the creation of the Coalition for Public Safety, introduced on February 19, 2015. It’s a bipartisan coalition of funders and advocacy groups that will work on reforming the current criminal justice system and hopes to find solutions to the most pressing issues in the realm of current practices. The coalition is funded by both conservative and liberal groups such as Koch Industries, the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In addition, both right and left-wing organizations such as FreedomWorks, Americans for Tax Reform, the ACLU, and the Center for American Progress will partner with the Coalition to work at all levels of the government (local, state, and federal) to overhaul ineffective criminal justice policies. The initial funding is $5 million, and will be used to launch a campaign to tackle prison overpopulation, mandatory sentencing practices, reduce recidivism, and address many other issues endemic to the American criminal justice system.

The Coalition for Public Safety emphasizes a smarter, fairer, and more cost-effective criminal justice system. It identifies five main goals:

Reduce our jail and prison populations and associated costs; end the systemic problems of overcriminalization and overincarceration — particularly of low-income communities and communities of color; ensure swift and fair outcomes for both the accused and the victim; and make communities safe by reducing recidivism and breaking down barriers faced by those returning home after detention or incarceration.

The overall plan of the Coalition is to replicate state practices that have proven to be successful in dealing with specific issues of the criminal justice system on the federal level. As the Coalition is diverse in its political affiliations, the plan is to divide spheres of influence between conservatives and liberals while lobbying for reform.

Koch Industries and other organizations on the right will try to persuade Republicans, while the Center for American Progress and other liberal think-tanks will work on convincing Democrats to engage in meaningful dialogue about criminal justice reform. Other organizations such as the ACLU will lobby at the state level to include criminal justice reform issues on state ballots in 2016.

The Bipartisan Summit for Criminal Justice

Another early milestone of the criminal justice reform movement was the Bipartisan Summit for Criminal Justice held in Washington D.C. on March 26, 2015.

The summit brought together lawmakers, advocates, religious groups, and criminal justice leaders, totaling 600 people. There were 90 speakers who shared their experiences and proposed possible solutions to fix the American criminal justice system. Newt Gingrich and Van Jones hosted the event, putting their differences aside. Among the most prominent speakers and participants were Attorney General Eric Holder, Mark Holden (senior counsel for Koch Industries), David Simon (“The Wire” creator), Labor Secretary Tom Perez, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, Piper Kerman (author of “Orange is the New Black”) and Senator Cory Booker. Non-profit organizations that advocate for justice were present  as well.

So, it’s clear that criminal justice reform is gaining momentum, but why did both parties come on board in the first place?

 Why are both parties on board with criminal justice reform?

Players across the political spectrum have begun to form a bipartisan consensus, but do they care about the same things? Both conservatives and liberals have agreed that criminal justice reform is necessary, however, their reasons for engaging in the initial dialogue seem rather different.

Conservatives are particularly worried about the high costs of maintaining the prison complex as it operates right now. Financially speaking, criminal justice spending is soaring. Some conservatives also cite religious arguments as a reason to give second chances to those who acted wrongly. This philosophy is in accordance with Christian tradition. In this view, prison reform requires rehabilitation, not just incarceration.

Democrats tend to be more concerned with minority rights and the personal freedoms of American citizens that are being diminished by the current criminal justice system. They propose well-funded social programs in impoverished and vulnerable communities instead of an aggressive expansion of the prison complex.

Why does America need criminal justice reform?

(Un)Fairness of the Current System

The American criminal justice system has multiple issues with which to contend. One of the biggest is the disproportionate incarceration of Black and Latino youth and men. In addition, 60 percent of those who await trial, meaning they have not yet been formally convicted of any crime, are housed in detention facilities for months. The majority are lower income individuals who cannot afford to make bail. These holdings lead to many issues for these individuals, including loss of employment, housing, and even family.

In addition, civil asset forfeiture practices are often viewed as unfair as property can be confiscated at the pre-trial stage, without a formal conviction. In some cases, family members can suffer property seizure due to the actions of their children or other close family members.

Overall, the prison population is soaring with non-violent offenders, who are incarcerated for drug crimes, including simple possession or selling a small amount of marijuana.

It’s Too Expensive

The criminal justice system, particularly prison complexes, drain taxpayers’ money. On average, it costs $80 billion a year to maintain the American correctional system, not counting other criminal justice agencies and courts. As 86 percent of all prisoners are housed in state, not federal, correction facilities, state governments spend large sums of money on incarceration, leaving fewer resources for education, mental health, and social services. In addition, it costs around $88,000 a year to house a young offender in a juvenile facility. Juveniles in particular have more developmental and educational needs which have to be addressed by the prison facility where they are housed.

Recently, costs associated with police misconduct, such as fees and settlements, are also soaring as more incidents are published and openly discussed.

It Doesn’t Solve Problems

The current criminal justice system incarcerates violent and non-violent offenders alike without any consideration for the mental health, drug, or alcohol issues these people may face. Moreover, it doesn’t provide tools for those who have been released from prison to reintegrate back into society. Formerly incarcerated individuals are largely disenfranchised through laws restricting Pell Grants, voting, certain types of employment, and housing.

Overall, left and right-wing politicians have gotten it right: current criminal justice system is costly, ineffective, and unfair in many ways, and it needs fixing. Watch the video below to learn more about reasons why America needs a comprehensive criminal justice reform:

Are there any signs of progress?

This new wave of bipartisan criminal justice reform is still in its infancy, but signs of progress in changing ineffective criminal justice practices are seen in both state and federal initiatives.

State Practices

Many states have already enacted innovative programs to overhaul civil assets forfeiture practices and restore voting rights to those who bear the stigma of a criminal conviction. For example:

• State Representative David Simpson (R) introduced a bill that could potentially prohibit civil asset forfeiture without formal conviction in Texas. State Senator Nathan Dahm (R) proposed similar legislature in Oklahoma.
• Many states have enacted so-called “Ban the Box” laws that prohibit asking about criminal convictions in employment applications. Currently, “Ban the Box” laws have been successfully implemented in states such as Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and New Mexico. In addition, individual jurisdictions in various states have begun to use this practice.

Watch the video below to learn more about “Ban the Box” movement:

Federal Initiatives

On a federal level, Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, is one of the most vocal proponents of criminal justice reform:

• Paul and Tim Walberg (R) from Michigan introduced the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act, that raises the burden of proof on the government for asset seizure.
• Rand Paul and Senator Harry Reid, the Senate Minority Leader, re-introduced the Civil Rights Voting Restoration Act of 2015 as a bipartisan effort to restore voting rights to non-violent formerly incarcerated individuals.
• Rand Paul, Brian Schatz (D) from Hawaii, and two U.S Representatives, Corrine Brown from Florida and Keith Ellison from Minnesota introduced the Police Creating Accountability by Making Effective Recording Available (Police CAMERA) Act of 2015 that creates a pilot grant program for police departments across the country who are willing to use body cameras.

In addition, education reform is being worked on, and the Comprehensive Justice and Mental Health Act is on its way. Both pieces of legislation are important components of re-designing the American criminal justice system by breaking the school-to-prison pipeline, and increasing access to treatment for mentally-ill people in the criminal justice system.

What are the concerns over bipartisan criminal justice reform?

Not everybody believes in the future of bipartisanship, as history has consistently proven that consensus could be compromised at any stage of the process. For example, a recent human trafficking bill with bipartisan support was filibustered over anti-abortion language, and, consequently, died in the chamber. Doubts remain that bipartisanship could be successful as Congress starts its legislative process. Such concerns are voiced due to the profound differences in the two parties’ ideologies, as well as their social and economic views.

These differences also incite worries over the redistribution of prison money. Liberals generally seem to hope that after reform, money that was formerly used for incarceration will be released for education and social services. However, conservatives mostly remain silent on this issue, postponing the discussion for a later date.

Some critics on the left believe that bipartisan criminal justice reform was “right-wing” from the beginning, initiated by the Koch brothers, and then marketed as a “bipartisan” effort. In this view, the movement serves the conservative agenda by pushing the expansion of for-profit community correctional facilities, including the consolidation of medical treatment programs within prison complexes. The rationale is as follows: if non-violent offenders are released to community corrections rather than to prison confinement, it will produce a new source of revenue for private companies that provide treatment for addiction and other medical and mental health issues. The money will be channeled through non-profit organizations that are free to sub-contract their services.

In addition, the Coalition has heavy representation of conservative think-tanks and  prominent liberal groups, but it doesn’t include grassroots community and advocacy groups that could bring the voices of poor communities of color to the table.

Another point of criticism is centered on the notion that the Coalition doesn’t ask the right questions and completely ignores the issue of structural racism that fuels the community-to-corrections pipeline. It acknowledges “over-criminalization” and “over-incarceration” of individuals from these communities, but doesn’t address the underlying reasons for it.

Conclusion

Criminal justice reform is inevitable as there are multiple concerns about the current criminal justice system. However, will it produce the intended changes and improve the American criminal justice system? The Coalition has all the tools to initiate reform, but political differences and personal motivations of certain players can easily change the course of reform at any given moment. It’s a shaky “unlikely alliance,” but it’s certainly better than nothing at all.

Resources

Primary

LegiScan: Bill Text: TX HB3171 | 2015-2016 | 84th Legislature | Introduced

LegiScan: Bill Text: OK SB621 | 2015 | Regular Session | Introduced

Rand Paul: Sens. Paul, Schatz & Reps. Brown, Ellison Introduce Bipartisan Legislation To Help Expand Use of Police Body Cameras

Rand Paul: Sen. Paul Introduces Civil Rights Voting Restoration Act

The U.S. Department of Justice: Attorney General Prohibits Federal Agency Adoptions of Assets Seized by State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies Except Where Needed to Protect Public Safety

Additional

#cut 50: A Bipartisan Summit on Criminal Justice Reform

Huffington Post Politics: Georgia Governor Signs ‘Ban The Box’ Order Helping Ex-Offenders Get Jobs

National Journal: This May Be the Year Crime Finally Stops Being a Wedge Issue

NBCNews: Editorial: Could Criminal Justice Reform Create Bipartisanship?

Politico: Fixing Justice in America

Slate: A Koch and a Smile

Southern Coalition for Social Justice: Ban the Box Community Initiative Guide

The Daily Caller: Red State Forfeiture Bills Signal Bipartisan Push For Justice Reform

Truth Out: “Bipartisan” Criminal Justice Reform: A Misguided Merger

Truth Out: Smoke and Mirrors: Essential Questions About “Prison Reform”

Truth Out: Confidence Men and “Prison Reform”

U.S. News: Lawmakers Outline Path Forward on Criminal Justice Reform

U.S. News: Democrats Block Human Trafficking Bill Over Abortion Language

Justice Policy Institute: The Costs of Confinement: Why Good Juvenile Justice Policies. Make Good Fiscal Sense May 2009

Vera Institute of Justice: The Price of Prisons. What Incarceration Costs Taxpayers

Valeriya Metla

Valeriya Metla is a young professional, passionate about international relations, immigration issues, and social and criminal justice. She holds two Bachelor Degrees in regional studies and international criminal justice. Contact Valeriya at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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