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The conditions that led to the tragedy at Lee, and which are visible all over the country, have become so appalling that even politicians on the Right have begun to pay lip service to the problem. Though the United States makes up only 5 percent of the world’s population, we have 25 percent of its prisoners. This is because we jail the poor for being poor, we over-sentence them for nonviolent offenses, and we allow unconscionable human rights abuses to occur behind prison walls.

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Sanders’s Justice and Safety for All platform advances three major paradigm shifts in criminal justice policy: 1) Shattering a zero-sum notion of justice, 2) Refuting the idea that you have to fix people to fix the system, and 3) Hitching criminal justice reform to the expansion of universal public goods. The Sanders platform makes clear that there can never be a just criminal justice system as long as there is an unjust and deeply unequal America.

To begin, Sanders’s platform rejects the idea that what’s bad for a person convicted of a crime is good for a person harmed by crime. This idea has fueled a decades-long sentencing arms race among politicians of both parties. But the zero-sum notion is a hollow, disingenuous trick. Continually devising ways to punish people ever more severely has only served to paper over the reality that crime survivors in the US are woefully underserved.

While politicians were busy throwing the book at those convicted of crimes, they neglected to provide housing, medical care, and paid time off for victims. Rather than ratcheting up excessive forms of punishment, which does little to make us safer, the Sanders platform invests in strategies that are known to reduce crime. The platform recognizes that “tough on crime” politics has long distorted how many people define safety. Real safety means having a stable place to live, quality healthcare, reliable transportation, clean water, and a job with dignity and workplace protections.

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https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/10/bernie-sanders-campaign-criminal-justice