10 ways to put justice back in the criminal justice system

To work for all of us, policing practices should be rooted in human rights principles and recognize the importance of maintaining a good relationship between communities and police. Yet, every day we see Black men racially profiled and treated brutally by law enforcement. Innocent poor people spend years in jail awaiting trial over charges for because they can’t afford bail.

Nearly three million children are waiting for parents to return home from prison, while two in three families can’t meet their basic needs because of the costs associated with a loved one’s conviction and incarceration.

The U.S. is the worldwide leader in mass incarceration, but finally there is consensus that we must make major changes to fix a system fraught with injustice. It’s already happening in some places: Ithaca is addressing its opioid epidemic with a public health approach —  dealing with addiction rather than treating drug users as criminals. That city could establish the nation’s first supervised injection site. In Memphis, crisis intervention teams send mental health responders to facilitate mental crisis interventions — rather than sending in the police to respond.

{mosads}These examples show how the criminal justice system can be improved. Fully transforming the system means tackling several maligned policies across different agencies and jurisdictions at once. This week, The Opportunity Agenda released an interactive report called “Transforming the System,” which details concrete changes that policymakers can make to address our failing criminal justice system, including:

1)Invest in communities over incarceration

The president should draft an Executive Order—based on the executive authority to set prosecutorial priorities and to manage the federal prisons system—directing federal law enforcement agencies to prioritize policies and practices that reduce incarceration and prioritize community investment over imprisonment as a strategy for ensuring public safety.

2)Prohibit “volume-based” performance measures

Legislatures, prosecutor’s officers and law enforcement agencies should prohibit performance metrics that reward criminal justice agents for increasing their volumes of prosecutions, tickets, summonses, arrests, probation violations, and other punitive civilian encounters. They should also provide protection for whistleblowers who report the use of unofficial “volume-based” performance metrics; and create strict penalties for law enforcement agencies that practice these policies.

3)Use restorative justice

Restorative justice programs seek to repair the harm caused to victims and communities, and include practices such as family group conferences, mediation, community decision-making, and mechanisms for restitution. Local governments and the judiciary should establish restorative justice programs that address community justice matters, including programs that address serious offenses. 

4)Use more pardons and expedite commutations

The President should ensure that pardons, which fully or conditionally forgive crimes, are used more extensively to address injustice in the criminal justice system. This includes taking steps to provide additional resources to the Pardons Office, expediting the commutations process and eliminating bureaucratic barriers to relief.

5)Include the voices of those directly affected

Policymakers should incorporate the voices and policy suggestions of people who have been directly affected by the criminal justice system—including formerly incarcerated people and survivors of police violence—in the development of laws and policies that affect them.

6)Recommit to human rights

Local, state, and federal governments should recommit to human rights by complying with human rights standards for racial equality and incorporating human rights into employee trainings, orientations, and handbooks for those working in the criminal justice system. Our federal government should also grant United Nations officials and experts unrestricted access to inspect U.S. detention facilities.

7)Establish truth & reconciliation commissions

Where there is a history of past abuse and/or community mistrust of law enforcement, local and state legislatures should establish commissions for truth and/or reconciliation. Incorporating a cross-section of stakeholders, these commissions, would look closely at the issues affecting their communities and make recommendations based on their findings.

8)Fund community outreach

The Department of Justice (DOJ) should reward healthy relationships between the community and law enforcement agencies by giving preference to law enforcement agencies that have a substantive community outreach strategy detailed in their funding applications.

9)Don’t fund bad actors

The DOJ Civil Rights Division and the DOJ Office of Community Oriented Policing Services should work together to ensure police departments are not awarded grants to hire additional police officers if they are  under investigation or have outstanding cases for statutory or constitutional violations.

10.) Enhance prosecutorial integrity

Prosecutors can unintentionally rely upon prosecutions of low-income defendants and defendants of color to meet cultural and political pressures to increase convictions. Prosecutors should instead be incentivized to use qualified and effective diversion programs as a tool for promoting safe communities and ensuring arrestees receive drug and mental health treatment when needed.

None of these steps alone will fix our broken criminal justice system, but by approaching reforms systemically we have a much better chance putting a stop to the grave injustices this system perpetuates and ending mass incarceration.

Thusi is the associate counsel for The Opportunity Agenda, a social justice communication lab. She has litigated cases on policing and structural inequality in the criminal justice system. Follow the Opportunity Agenda on Twitter @oppagenda 

The views expressed by Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.