Criminal Justice System/Prisons

I would work towards implementing principles of transformative justice:

  • Where no one’s safety is at stake, bypass the criminal justice system and resolve issues between the parties and in the context of communities:
  • Emphasize prevention: educate about abuse, rape, sexual assault, anger management, and conflict resolution beginning in elementary school;
  • Provide adequate safe spaces, i .e., domestic violence shelters, shelters for homeless persons;
  • Allow for community service and reparations in place of fines and prison sentences for nonviolent crimes;
  • Treat addiction and substance abuse as health issues;
  • Decriminalize drugs;
  • End the practice of trying juveniles as adults;
  • Stop the cycle of arresting, incarcerating, treating and releasing persons who have been alcoholics for many years and who are homeless. Appropriate funds designated for building or buying apartment buildings in which they will have their own units  in which they may drink alcohol and allow them to remain in their apartments so long as they follow rules designed for the safety of residents and the community. Use the programs of this type pioneered in Seattle as a model;
  • Allow felons to vote.
  • End hidden police racism by monitoring practices like obscuring racial profiling by noting every person cited or arrested as “white”.