Criminal Justice Reform

Originally posted to Facebook on Tuesday, May 2, 2016.

The election is 27 weeks from today.  This week’s issue is Criminal Justice Reform.  For more on my reasoning behind my weekly focus, click here.

I’m a data junkie.  I love facts and statistics.  Here are a couple.  The United States represents less than 5% of the global population and almost 25% of the global prison population.  The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world.  About 50% of them are there for drug offenses.  Much of this is a result of the “War on Drugs that instated mandatory minimum drug sentences.  The prison population has increased 790% since 1980 but funding and space hasn’t kept up which has led to overcrowding.  African American men are far more likely to be stopped, searched, charged, and sentenced than white men found guilty of the same offenses.

Here are the candidates’ responses to the above statistics, but first a note.  You’ll notice that there is a lot more information on Clinton & Sanders.  Over the past 6 weeks, I have found that it is much easier to find their stances and platforms on the issues.  It is always laid out on their websites.  Every week, I’ve really had to dig and read a lot of articles to find information on Cruz & Trump.  Point of interest:  Clinton outlines 30 issues on her website.  Sanders outlines 33.  Cruz outlines 9 (I just read that Cruz has dropped out, but I am posting this anyway).  Trump outlines 7.

Clinton:  I am including just a fraction of Hillary’s extensive plan.  She supports medical marijuana and wants to reschedule marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II in order to advance research into its health benefits.  She believes in reducing the penalty for possessing marijuana.  She also wants to cut mandatory minimum drug sentences in half and wants to allow current nonviolent prisoners to seek fairer sentences.  She also believes in the end of private prisons.

Much of her plan is focused on strengthening trust between communities & police. She wants to  make new investments to support state-of-the-art law enforcement training programs at every level on issues such as implicit bias, use of force, and de-escalation among other things.  She wants to  double funding for the U.S. Department of Justice “Collaborative Reform” program to provide technical assistance and training to agencies that undertake voluntary efforts toward transnational reform of their police departments. She says that across the country, there are police departments deploying creative and effective strategies that we can learn from and build on. She believes in supporting legislation to end racial profiling by federal, state, and local law enforcement officials.   She believes in providing federal matching funds to make body cameras available to every police officer to increase transparency and accountability on both sides of the lens.  She believes in  collecting and reporting national data on policing to inform policing strategies and provide greater transparency and accountability on issues such as crime, officer involved shootings, and deaths in custody.   She believes in  creating national guidelines for use of force that recognize the need for officers to protect their safety and the safety of others, but emphasize use of force as a last resort and at the appropriate level. She believe the federal government has an important role to play in standardizing best practices for the use of force.

Cruz:  Cruz has said, “I’m proud to stand with law enforcement, to stand with the police and firefighters and first responders. They are American heroes. And they need a President who doesn’t vilify them and who doesn’t seek to tear us apart along racial lines and inflame racial divisions. Instead, we need a President who works to unify us behind shared American values.” (1/8/16)  Cruz was once a leading advocate on drug sentencing reform (4/28/15), but has flipped on that issue (1/28/16).  I found some stuff on Cruz supporting the death penalty and wanting tougher pressure on sex offenders, but that pretty much sums it up.  This is not one of his platforms.

Sanders:  Again, this is just a fraction of Bernie’s plan which falls under racial justice for him.  He wants to “demilitarize” police forces so they don’t look like “invading armies.”  He wants to establish a new model police training program that “reorients the way we do law enforcement in this country. With input from a broad segment of the community including activists and leaders from civil rights organizations we will reinvent how we police America.”  He wants to federally fund and require body cameras for law enforcement officers to make it easier to hold them accountable. He wants to require police departments and states to collect data on all police shootings and deaths that take place while in police custody and make that data public.  He believes that we need new rules on the allowable use of force and that police officers need to be trained to de-escalate confrontations and to humanely interact with people who have mental illnesses.  He wants to make sure federal resources are there to crack down on the illegal activities of hate groups.  He wants to ban prisons for profit, which he says result in an over-incentive to arrest, jail and detain in order to keep prison beds full.  He believes in turning back from the failed “War on Drugs” and eliminating mandatory minimums which result in sentencing disparities between black and white people.  He wants to take marijuana off the federal government’s list of outlawed drugs.  He wants to invest in drug courts and medical and mental health interventions for people with substance abuse problems, so that they do not end up in prison, they end up in treatment.  He wants to investigate local governments that are using implicit or explicit quotas for arrests or stops and stop local governments that are relying on fines, fees or asset forfeitures as a steady source of revenue.

Trump: Trump touts himself as being tough on crime and believes that the police are “mistreated.”  During the February 6, 2016 GOP debate he said, “The police in this country have done an unbelievable job of keeping law and order.  They're afraid for their jobs, they're afraid of the mistreatment they get."  He believes we have to give power back to the police.  Like Cruz, Trump does not have a platform for this.  He favors mass incarceration of undocumented immigrants.  He cites that an “overwhelming amount of violent crime in our major cities is committed by blacks and Hispanics.”  He supports the death penalty.