4. What is the biggest step that you would take to combat systemic racial bias in the justice system? (Please select one)
a. Remove sentencing disparities for drug-related sentences.
b. Implement reforms to reduce the overall prison population.
c. End racial profiling across the justice system.
d. Divert low-level offenders away from jail and prison time.
e. Reform federal prosecutorial practices, or support local police reform.
f. End the school-to-prison pipeline.
g. Other. __________________________
Vice President Joe Biden
a. Remove sentencing disparities for drug-related offenses
Mayor Michael Bloomberg
b. Implement reforms to reduce the overall prison population.
I would take all of the steps above as president, each of which is necessary to remove sustained racial injustice in our system. But one of the overall goals is to reduce the overall prison population—and many of the other steps (diversion, reducing excessive sentencing, reforming prosecution) are components of that overall goal to reduce incarceration.
Senator Bernie Sanders
g. Other.
Over the last number of years, we have seen a terrible level of police violence against unarmed people in the minority community: Laquan McDonald, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Jessica Hernandez, Tamir Rice, Jonathan Ferrell, Oscar Grant, Antonio Zambrano-Montes and others. People of color, killed by the police, who should be alive today. We know that African-Americans are twice as likely to be arrested, and almost four times as likely to experience physical force in an encounter with the police.
Today, black and Latino men are more likely to be sentenced to more jail time for committing the exact same crime as white men, with black men being jailed at more than five times the rate of whites.
All of this and more is why we are finally going to bring about real criminal justice reform in this country. We are going to end the international embarrassment of having more people in jail than any other country on earth. Instead of spending $80 billion a year on jails and incarceration, we are going to invest in jobs and education for our young people. No more private prisons and detention centers. No more profiteering from locking people up. No more "war on drugs." No more keeping people in jail because they're too poor to afford cash bail. Real police department reform. We will transform the racist and broken criminal justice system, change the way we police black communities, and cut the incarcerated population in half. When we are in the White House, we will:
● End the War on Drugs and stop criminalizing addiction. As part of this effort he will institute a full review of the current sentencing guidelines and end the sentencing disparity between crack and cocaine.
● Cut the national prison population in half and end mass incarceration by abolishing the death penalty, three strikes laws, and mandatory minimum sentences, as well as expanding the use of alternatives to detention
● End harmful policing practices like racial profiling, stop and frisk, oppressive “broken windows” policing, and the militarization of police forces.
● Expand the use of sentencing alternatives, including community supervision and publicly funded halfway houses. This includes funding state-based pilot programs to establish alternatives to incarceration, including models based on restorative justice and free access to treatment and social services.
● End the school-to-prison pipeline.
● Ensure accountability and fairness in prosecution. Ensure due process and right to counsel by vastly increasing funding for public defenders and creating a federal formula to ensure populations have a minimum number of public defenders to meet their needs.
● End for-profit greed in our criminal justice system, top to bottom by: by banning for-profit prisons and detention centers, ending cash bail, and making prison and jail communications, re-entry, diversion and treatment programs fee-free. And he will transform the way we police communities.
● Transform the way we police communities by ending the War on Drugs by legalizing marijuna and expunging past convictions, treating children who interact with the justice system as children, reversing the criminalization of addiction, and ending the reliance on police forces to handle mental health emergencies, homelessness, maintenance violations, and other low-level situations.
● Reform our decrepit prison system, guarantee a “Prisoners Bill of Rights,” and ensure a just transition for incarcerated individuals upon their release.
● Reverse the criminalization of communities, end cycles of violence, provide support to survivors of crime, and invest in our communities.
● Ensure law enforcement accountability and robust oversight, including banning the use of facial recognition software for policing.
● Require and fund police officer training on implicit bias (to include biases based on race, gender, sexual orientation and identity, religion, ethnicity and class), cultural competency, de-escalation, crisis intervention, adolescent development, and how to interact with people with mental and physical disabilities. We will ensure that training is conducted in a meaningful way with strict independent oversight and enforceable guidelines.
● And more as detailed in his Justice and Safety for All plan.
Senator Elizabeth Warren
e. Reform federal prosecutorial practices, or support local police reform.
Our current criminal system places enormous power in the hands of the state. The government controls what leads to pursue, what charges are levied, whether a plea is offered, and how long someone spends behind bars. It has massive resources at its disposal, and enjos few obligations to share information and limited oversight of its actions. To make matters worse, race permeates every aspect of the system. Law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and judges make countless decisions every day that shape the reality of our criminal justice system functions for the millions of Americans it comes into contact with. We must critically examine each aspect of the enforcement process to ensure that it is both just and consistent with public safety.