It’s time to end the war on drug users — repeal the heavy penalties for possession; pardon the millions of nonviolent offenders; replace mass incarceration with mandatory drug treatment; restore voting rights to convicts and ex-convicts.
A new BJS report shows that U.S. jails reduced their populations by 25% in the first few months of the pandemic. But even then, the U.S. was still putting more people in local jails than most countries incarcerate in total.
Cutbacks in housing, healthcare, public transportation and economic opportunities and the criminalization of underground economy jobs, like sex work and the sale of illicit drugs, lead to increased incarceration and declining public safety.
If the work of abolition is not only about stopping prisons, but also about imagining a future in which we win, then people cannot be released from prisons only to be put on the streets or to premature disability at the poultry factory.
Campaign Zero has a concrete, data-backed proposal for changing how police departments use force.
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The coronavirus pandemic is leading to “an explosion in the use of solitary confinement in prisons, jails, and detention centers.” Punitive isolation under the pretext of public health is worsening the crisis of mass incarceration.
Unless instant action is taken to reduce jail populations, a terrible price will be paid.
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