Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Sanders Unveils Plan to “Fundamentally Transform” Criminal Legal System
Jake Johnson
21 Aug 2019
🖨️ Print Article
Sanders Unveils Plan to “Fundamentally Transform” Criminal Legal System
Sanders Unveils Plan to “Fundamentally Transform” Criminal Legal System

The presidential candidate calls for people to “stand together” to end the war on drugs and cut the prison population in half.

“Sanders vows to ‘rebuild the communities that mass incarceration continues to decimate.’"

Decrying America's status as the "world's leading jailer," Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday released a comprehensive plan to confront the crisis of mass incarceration, end the criminalization of poverty, and dramatically overhaul the U.S. criminal justice system.

"We have a criminal justice system that is racist and broken, and working together we're going to fundamentally transform it," said Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.

The platform, which Sanders unveiled at an event in Columbia, South Carolina on Sunday, condemns America's "overly-punitive approach to public safety" and urges investments "to rebuild the communities that mass incarceration continues to decimate."

"We have over two million people in jail and prison, more than any other nation on earth, and they are disproportionately African-American, Latino, and Native American," Sanders wrote in an email to supporters on Sunday. "We spend $80 billion a year keeping people behind bars, money which could be used for education, job creation, and affordable housing."

To remedy this dysfunctional and devastating system, Sanders' platform—detailed on his website—calls for:

* A ban on private prisons as part of a broader effort to "end profiteering in our criminal justice system";

* An end to cash bail, which traps poor Americans in a cycle of debt;

* Halting excessive sentencing "with the goal of cutting the incarcerated population in half";

* Transformation of policing by ensuring oversight and accountability for law enforcement, banning use of facial recognition software by law enforcement, and ending "programs that provide military equipment to local police";

* Abolishing the death penalty;

* Legalization of marijuana and erasure of past marijuana convictions; and

* An end to the criminalization of addiction by funding adequate treatment for those addicted to opioids.

"If we stand together, we can eliminate private prisons and detention centers. No more profiteering from locking people up," Sanders said during his speech in South Carolina.

"If we stand together we can end the disastrous 'war on drugs,'" the senator added. "If we stand together we can end cash bail. No more keeping people in jail because they're too poor. If we stand together we can enact real police department reform and prosecute police brutality. If we stand together, there is nothing, nothing, nothing that we cannot accomplish."

Jake Johnson is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Follow him on Twitter: @johnsonjakep

This article previously appeared in Common Dreams.

Mass Black Incarceration

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Reuven Blau
Blacks and Hispanics Seeking Parole Face Widening Racial Disparity, Report Finds
20 November 2024
After a damning revelation eight years ago, state leaders changed the make-up of the Parole Board to combat inequality.
ESSAY: Women in Prison: How We Are, Assata Shakur, 1978
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY: Women in Prison: How We Are, Assata Shakur, 1978
10 August 2022
Assata Shakur exposes the conditions faced by incarcerated Black women in a powerful 1978 essay.
The US Political Elite Gives Cover to the Brutal US Police State
Netfa Freeman
The US Political Elite Gives Cover to the Brutal US Police State
09 February 2022
The US political elite and their elite press are using the fraudulent claims about a “crime wave” as an ideological offensive, a backlash, agai
Organizers Are Calling on Congress to Close Loophole That Enables Prison Slavery
Tamar Sarai Davis
Organizers Are Calling on Congress to Close Loophole That Enables Prison Slavery
08 July 2021
The ‘slavery clause’ made the passage of restrictions targeting Black people like the Black Codes possible as well as convict leasing of
Lost Opportunity, Lost Lives
 Lisa Armstrong
Lost Opportunity, Lost Lives
01 July 2021
Prison officials could have prevented sickness and death by releasing those who were most vulnerable to coronavirus and least likely to reoffend —
To End Racial Capitalism, We Will Need to Take On the Institution of Policing
Henry A. Giroux
To End Racial Capitalism, We Will Need to Take On the Institution of Policing
23 June 2021
The same activists who are working to defund the police are also part of a collective movement to bring an end to neoliberal capitalism.
Hacked Emails Give Unfiltered View Into the DC Police Gang Database
Chris Gelardi
Hacked Emails Give Unfiltered View Into the DC Police Gang Database
23 June 2021
“Police can call you a gang member because they observed you with other gang members, who they declared gang members because they were with other g
Jail Populations Back Up After COVID-19
Weihua Li, Beth Schwartzapfel, Michael R. Sisak and Camille Fassett
Jail Populations Back Up After COVID-19
09 June 2021
Judges, prosecutors and sheriffs in many states sent people home instead of to jail last year, but new data suggests the change is not lasting.
How Corporations Buy—and Sell—Food Made With Prison Labor
H. Claire Brown 
How Corporations Buy—and Sell—Food Made With Prison Labor
02 June 2021
The small world of prison food production is a microcosm of the American food system, which all too o#en functions as a race to the bottom.
The US’s Biggest County Jails Are Sites of Extreme Environmental Injustice
Adam Mahoney
The US’s Biggest County Jails Are Sites of Extreme Environmental Injustice
06 May 2021
After first being forced to live in chemically toxic communities, Black and Brown people are then incarcerated in jails where they cannot escape so

More Stories


  • Raymond Nat Turner
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Raymond Nat Turner, Upsurge NYC and Black Agenda Report
    05 Apr 2024
    BAR Poet-in-Residence, Raymond Nat Turner, joins us from New York City to talk about his work and an upcoming performance with his group, Upsurge New York City.
  • Organization for the Victory of the People in Guyana
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Guyana is an Imperialist Target
    05 Apr 2024
    Gerald Perreira of Organization for the Victory of the People in Guyana joins us to discuss the long running territorial dispute with neighboring Venezuela and the increasing activity of U.S. in the…
  • Destruction of Al Shifa hospital
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Israel and the U.S. are Gangster States
    03 Apr 2024
    Any sign of even tiny opposition is enough to send Israel into a frenzy of bloodletting. Hospital attacks, murders of aid workers, violations of the sovereignty of embassies, are all par for the…
  • Palestine partition
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    STATEMENT: UN Palestine Commission Partition recommendation – Statement from the Arab Higher Committee, 6 February 1948
    03 Apr 2024
    The statement on the UN Partition of Palestine by the Arab Higher Committee is a reminder of the sordid history of the U.S. in the expropriation of land and the attempted ethnic cleansing of the…
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Eric Nshimiye, Another Rwandan American Facing Trial in Another Rwandan Witch Hunt
    03 Apr 2024
    The totalitarian state of Rwanda is guilty of many forms of transnational repression, including the lawfare exemplified in the case of Eric Nshimiye.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us