EJUSA’s vision is a world where violence is rare and every community is safe and healthy. That means that we have a criminal legal system that doesn’t cause more harm.
A full scale transformation of the criminal legal system and all the systems that connect to it is work that will take generations. We need to both rehab the mess we have now and build a new public safety ecosystem.
Today – and since forever – our criminal legal system focuses on one outcome: who caused harm and how do we punish them? There’s little to no concern for the survivor of that harm or the way the community recovers.
The policies that cities, states, and our federal government have put into place for over two centuries rely on the idea that we must center the person who caused harm. This punishment strategy is a failure and often causes more harm to families and communities. We must break this cycle of harm as we also work to transform the justice system.
From where I sit at EJUSA, there are two questions I ask myself nearly every day.
First, what is a policy landscape that both tears down what’s not working (pretty much everything) and puts the structures and procedures in place that prevent violence and deliver healing to everyone affected by violence without causing further harm to anyone?
And second, what does transformation even mean when we’re talking about changing policy in an environment, such as a legislative body, whose job is to steward and tweak the existing laws? Laws created by our state legislatures, arguably, impact the day-to-day lives of our communities in ways we don’t even know.
State legislatures have already started opening their doors to begin legislating policy that is both big and full of minutiae – all of it impacting people in every state across the country. It’s a funny time of year where the words of dead language light our path through the legislature. We – lawmakers, activists, my teammates and coalition partners – say words like sine die, cloture, and germane like it’s a lunch order. It’s a terrible, critically important, and utterly opaque process filled with high drama that is also incredibly boring. They don’t teach us Sun Tzu in political science because they think it only informs strategy to fight actual wars.
In my mind, it’s possible to support policy change that lessens the harm of the current legal system as we work to pass legislation that builds a foundation that embraces new and transformational strategies to interrupt and prevent violence.
I wish I was here to tell you I have it all figured out, but it’s hella complicated.
I know it is possible to go from a punishment based system to one that prioritizes healing and violence prevention while building a world where violence is rare, but it’s no small job. We definitely can’t do it all in one legislative season, we definitely can’t do it all in one legislative session, but as you’ll read below critical bills are being introduced that can be the foundation for transformation.
Every piece of legislation is an opportunity to arrest the harm the current system causes and, at the same time, plant seeds for a transformed future. I’m excited to share a few ways we will support our whole vision in the 2022 legislative season:
What are we working on?
In 2020, we passed the Racial Justice Act and vowed to come back to make the bill retroactive. Now we must pass the Racial Justice Act For All (#RJA4All) to confront racism not only in the future, but for Black and Brown people languishing in jails and prisons right now. The RJA was a first-of-its-kind law – applying to all criminal sentences. The coalition hopes to make history again with the Racial Justice Act for All this year, and extend civil rights in the courtroom for ALL Black and Brown people impacted by racist convictions and sentencing.
Extreme sentences, such as life without parole (LWOP) and the death penalty, cause harm to families, people who are victims of violence, and people who are or have been incarcerated. As we work to break our dependence on punishment, we can and should work to decrease the harm of the current system. One way we can do that is to continue to break the reliance on extreme punishment as a legitimate path to accountability. I’m very excited that the anti-death penalty coalition in Caifornia is partnering with the DropLWOP coalition to work on The Sentencing Reform Act of 2021, a bill that will eliminate the Felony Murder Rule. This bill, if passed, will apply to LWOP and death penalty cases.
Our long time partners at Ohioans to Stop Executions are one year in to the #NoDeathPenaltyOH campaign, a bipartisan effort to repeal the death penalty in the state. Ohio’s legislature runs on a 2-year session, and we’re halfway through, with identical bills, HB183/SB103, moving in both chambers. Republicans and Democrats are championing both bills, and hearings have brought out death row exonerees, families of murder victims, former prosecutors, legal experts, religious leaders, and more. Do you know anyone in OH? Please share this action alert!
With a Republican governor and Republican super majorities in both houses, we’re excited by early chatter we’re hearing on HB147, a bill to abolish the death penalty. If passed and signed by the governor, it would be the first state to end its death penalty with the signature of a Republican governor (unless Ohio beats them to it). This is one of the shortest legislative sessions we’re working in this cycle, at 45 days it will be over almost before it starts. So we have to act now!
This session, FADP is doing just that, HB1251/SB770 is a bill to limit the death penalty for people with severe mental illness. This bill is an important step for reducing the harm of the current criminal legal system in Florida.
EJUSA recently joined a campaign led by our partner Common Justice to pass Fair Access to Victims Compensation, a bill to expand eligibility to victims and survivors of crime for compensation funds. Victims compensation funds are designed to compensate victims and survivors of crime for costs that arise as a result of a crime. Only 3% of victims of crime are able to access critical funding. Eligibility requirements make victim compensation for many Black, Brown, and Indigenous unaccessible. This bill will change those current eligibility requirements.
What trends am I watching this legislative cycle?
- State legislative postures toward criminal justice reform – In the last five years we’ve seen state legislators and voters across the country be narrowly reform-minded. I say narrowly because many, though not all, of those reforms are centered on nonviolent offenses. But no matter how narrow or specific, every action has a reaction. Anecdotally, I’ve started to notice legislators lean away from reforms and solutions that are not centered on punishment.
- Distribution of federal stimulus and COVID relief money at the state and local level – States, counties, and cities are receiving billions of dollars in relief that is available to be spent on community-based violence prevention.
- Republican sponsorship of death penalty repeal bills – Over the last decade, we’ve seen an increase in the number of republican co-sponsors. In just the last two legislative cycles, Republican are listed as sponsors on bills to abolish the death penalty in 11 states plus the Federal Government.
Why am I hopeful?
Recognition of the need to transform our criminal legal system and the business of public safety continues to grow in our collective imagination. Dreaming about what’s possible is the first step to imagining the structures we need to tear down and build to get to a world where violence is rare.
Efforts to reform can contribute to transformation but we must continually make sure to excise the devil from the details – not falling back on lesser punishment, insisting that we offer new ways of doing business as we tear down the most terrible parts of existing policy in an effort to clear the way for transformational change. It’s a double edged sword and we must always be bold in our choices.
May your legislative sessions bring good policy to your state.
