Eight 2020 Democratic applicants penned essays for the Brennan Center’s series, “Ending Mass Incarceration: Ideas from Today’s Leaders,” highlighting their priorities to tackle a problem with a history of bipartisan assistance. The massive image: Most candidates show a united front on legalizing marijuana, restricting mass incarceration, and easing previously incarcerated individuals back into society. Other candidates take an unmarried-issue method, like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s stance on incarcerated women and former HUD Secretary Julián Castro’s imaginative and prescient for federal housing.
The breakdown
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) says prosecutors ought to “shift fulfillment measures” to “lowering useless imprisonment, decreasing racial disparities, and lowering recidivism rates” to help reduce mass incarceration. She also advocates for improved funds for public defenders and extends the constitutional right to counsel in civil instances related to housing, health care, and home violence.
Yes, but: As California’s former attorney widespread, Harris faced criticism for implementing hard-on-crime regulations like a truancy law that jailed parents whose children skipped school, among other measures. She recently said she regrets the “accidental results” of the 2010 law. On the other hand, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) prioritizes “the specific challenges our criminal justice system creates for women.” She is seeking to reinforce protections for incarcerated pregnant girls, cease the cash bail system, and create “alternatives to prison for low-level, nonviolent crimes,” together with first-time drug possession charges.
Former HUD Secretary Julián Castro sees federal housing coverage as a method through which crook justice reform can be finished. He promotes federal housing protection for humans with crooked information and tracking disproportionate police presence in groups of color and “racially segregated groups.” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is focused on expanding investment for drug courts to deal with drug dependency for nonviolent offenders because she believes addiction is an underlying cause of recidivism. Klobuchar additionally desires to bypass “CARA 2,” a follow-up to 2016’s Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA). Instead, the new invoice might request $1 billion to “aid proof-primarily based prevention, enforcement, treatment, and recovery programs.”
Beto O’Rourke wants to stop the federal prohibition on marijuana and expunge crook records of humans convicted for possession. He also desires to dispose of private for-profit prisons, end the cash bail system, and reduce recidivism via “strong rehabilitation services, counseling, and get right of entry to preventative health care.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is targeting at abolishment of private for-profit prisons. However, he also advocates for finishing the coin’s bail gadget and permitting simpler reintegration for previously incarcerated individuals into society. Sanders additionally believes that convicted felons must be able to vote while in prison.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is focused on “holding corporate criminals responsible.” She also desires to stop obligatory minimums, legalize marijuana, and expunge crook records for people convicted of “minor marijuana crimes,” further to ending private for-profit prisons, providing aid for people experiencing home abuse, intellectual illness, or drug dependency, and easing reintegration into society for former convicts.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) is focused on passing the Next Step Act, which he describes as the compliance First Step Act signed into law with the aid of Trump in 2018. The bill proposes “reducing the disparity among crack and powder cocaine sentences,” decreasing sentences for nonviolent drug offenses, “ending the federal prohibition on marijuana, and reinvesting within the groups most impacted through the failed War on Drugs.”
Booker’s new bill also proposes reinstating the proper to vote in federal elections for previously incarcerated individuals and improving reporting on police use-of-force. It additionally goals to lower prison populations and crime in states through federal offers and prohibits employers from asking job candidates approximately their criminal histories until the final stages of the interview process. Former Vice President Joe Biden did not write an essay for the Brennan Center but has expressed remorse for assisting difficult-on-crime payments throughout his time in Congress, along with a law that imposed strict sentencing requirements for crack and powder cocaine offenses. Experts say that the measure brought about an era of mass incarceration that disproportionately affected black Americans.
He denied that his 1994 crime bill, which added the federal three-strikes law, contributed to mass incarceration. Biden also has a record of being anti-marijuana and has referred to it as a “gateway drug.” While VP, he supported decriminalization rather than legalization. He now says he regrets helping the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, in line with the NYT. Biden’s marketing campaign website says he goals to “take away racial disparities at each degree” and “eliminate sentencing practices that don’t suit the crime,” which will reform the criminal justice system. Still, he has yet to suggest particular regulations.
