Congratulations to our presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden!
What Sanders and Warren see in Caban
If you were paying close attention to presidential politics last week, you may have noticed something unusual. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in the midst of tweeting about reproductive health, ending forever wars and celebrating Juneteenth, also tweeted out an endorsement. It wasn’t an endorsement in a race for governor, or Congress, or even mayor of a city in the key primary state of Iowa. Instead, Warren endorsed Tiffany Cabán, a 31-year-old public defender running for district attorney in Queens, New York, on a progressive platform that includes decriminalizing sex work, declining to prosecute recreational drug use, eliminating cash bail, and opposing the construction of new jails. That same day, Sen. Bernie Sanders also endorsed Cabán.
Why are these presidential candidates wading into a local election for district attorney? Cynics will say Warren and Sanders are merely making an appeal to the most progressive elements of the Democratic base. But this jaded analysis misses something far more fundamental about how we should think about criminal justice reform: A president alone cannot end mass incarceration. Indeed, dramatically reducing America’s jail and prison populations and curtailing the power of the prison-industrial complex requires far more of a bottom-up effort, starting with local reformers at the county, city and state levels.
The problem of mass incarceration is well known. Since the 1980s, the number of incarcerated Americans has grown fivefold. The United States has 5% of the world’s population, and 25% of its prison population. We now spend $50 billion per year on state prisons alone. These are facts that Americans are becoming increasingly familiar with, thanks in part to the work of filmmaker Ava DuVernay, author and legal scholar Michelle Alexander, and countless activists. Even Kim Kardashian has used her platform and celebrity to raise awareness of and advance criminal justice reform efforts.
Less well known is local prosecutors’ outsized role in this system. Only one in 10 criminal cases are prosecuted at the federal level. Federal prisons and jails hold approximately 221,000 people, a figure dwarfed by the more than 1.9 million people held in state prisons and jails. And the rise of mass incarceration has been fueled primarily by local prosecutors, who have immense discretion to pursue criminal charges. Fordham University law professor John Pfaff’s research proves it: From 1994 to 2008, the crime rate and total number of arrests fell, yet prison admissions grew by 35%. Why? Pfaff found that something else grew by 35%: felony charges filed by prosecutors. Pfaff also found that half of this increase occurred in cases where misdemeanors were charged as felonies.
https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-20190624-2spqie5yrvdpjczczl3f2xbhoq-story.html
If I were to vote in a presidentialprimary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
= new reply since forum marked as read
If I were to vote in a presidentialprimary today, I would vote for: Undecided
If I were to vote in a presidentialprimary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
If I were to vote in a presidentialprimary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
If I were to vote in a presidentialprimary today, I would vote for: Undecided
