Over at The New Republic, Matt Ford has this effective discussion of some notable criminal justice reform proposals put forward by some notabe folks running for president. I recommend the full piece, which carries the full headline "Biden’s Big, Obvious Ideas for Criminal-Justice Reform: He and several other candidates have issued plans that appear ambitious only because America's system is so broken." Here are excerpts:
Taken as a whole, [Joe Biden's] plan is a tacit acknowledgement that the former vice president got it mostly wrong on criminal justice throughout his four-decade Senate career. Some of its positions, such decriminalizing marijuana and abolishing the death penalty, are specifically at odds with much of his legislative work in the 1980s and 1990s. But it’s also among the most comprehensive packages proposed by any of the Democratic contenders. Many of his rivals offer similar stances on sentencing reform and mass incarceration, but only South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg has articulated a more sweeping vision for reform.
It would be tempting to call these proposals radical, given that they would have a transformative effect on the American criminal-justice system. But they’re only radical when viewed through the prism of establishment politics. Considered from a moral and policy perspective, they’re downright obvious.
Take solitary confinement. Buttigieg says he would “abolish its prolonged use, bringing the United States in line with international human rights standards, which view the use of solitary confinement in excess of 15 days as per se torture.” Biden says that he would also largely end the practice, “with very limited exceptions such as protecting the life of an imprisoned person.” Booker, Harris, Warren, and four other Democratic senators co-sponsored a bill that would limit it to “the briefest term and under the least restrictive conditions possible.”
This would be a sharp break from the status quo in America, where tens of thousands of people are put in solitary confinement each year. It would also bring national policy in line with the academic consensus that prolonged isolation can cause serious psychological damage. As Buttigieg noted, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture recommends no more than 15 days in solitary and an absolute ban on its use for juveniles and people with mental illnesses. The Supreme Court first acknowledged the immense toll of solitary confinement in an 1890 case, and Justice Anthony Kennedy warned in 2015 that the practice “literally drives men mad.”...
Another common theme is the intersection of mental illness and law enforcement. Biden says he would “fund initiatives to partner mental health and substance use disorder experts, social workers, and disability advocates with police departments,” so that these people get the help they need rather than being locked up (or worse, shot dead). Buttigieg’s plan, by comparison, aims to remove police from the equation as much as possible. He instead proposes investments in “community-based care [and] front-end social supports” that would “minimize the need for police officers to serve as de facto social workers and allow them to resume their primary role as guardians of public safety.”
Ensuring that people with mental illnesses get treated by health-care professionals instead of police officers seems like a no-brainer. But in the U.S., the criminal-justice system doubles as the nation’s mental health-care provider of last resort. Those without the ability or resources to obtain treatment instead find themselves funneled into jails and prisons, perhaps the least therapeutic environments imaginable....
There’s still room for improvement in the Democrats’ plans. None of the major candidates discuss qualified-immunity reform in their plans.... Habeas corpus is another complicated but important area in need of reform....
It’s no critique of Biden, Buttigieg, or their rivals to note that they’re pushing for major changes to the way American criminal justice currently operates. At the same time, it’s worth taking stock of how self-evident their solutions are. Not throwing people in jail because they can’t pay court fees, and not condemning people to years or even decades of isolation, sound like baseline rules for a civilized society. What’s truly radical is the harshness of the system that Biden and other politicians of his generation built, not the means by which it’s undone.
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