Because 90% of all prisoners in the United States are in state facilities, the work that states are doing to reduce their prison populations is crucial. Attempting to end mass incarceration necessitates realizing this is a situation requiring not one national solution, but fifty state solutions. Below are current state solutions that could be effectively modeled by other states for meaningful reform.
“Democratic presidential candidates Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Tom Steyer faced criminal justice questions Monday that are seldom mentioned on the campaign trail, including sentencing reform for people convicted of violent crimes, civil rights for those coming out of prison and restorative justice, during the nation’s first candidate town hall organized by formerly incarcerated people.“
The Marshall Project
October 28, 2019
Read More“Harris, of course, is the former attorney general of California and has pitched her campaign on the foundation of her background as a prosecutor. Her pseudo-populist campaign slogan, “For the People,” is in fact a reference to the standard judicial language to describe prosecutors in a criminal trial. Harris is the “tough” and “fearless” fighter who says she wants to “prosecute the case” against Trump. In short, Harris is not so much running for president as suing for the job.“
Truth Out Magazine
September 10, 2019
Read More“Now Ms. Harris is running for president as a “progressive prosecutor.” She says she sees no contradiction in the term, arguing that a tough prosecutor can also be a force for reforming the criminal-justice system. But already, mere weeks into her candidacy, she is facing a chorus of skepticism, especially from the left. The death penalty episode shows the tricky crosscurrents that she has had to weather — and that are likely to intensify as she tries to square that circle.“
New York Times
February 11, 2019
Read More“Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and then the state’s attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent. Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.“
New York Times
January 17, 2019
Read More“Likely 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) released a new memoir this week. In The Truths We Hold, Harris touts her record as a "progressive prosecutor," but the book glosses over numerous instances where her office defended prosecutorial misconduct.“
Reason Magazine
January 9, 2019
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