The House of Delegates took aim at mass incarceration at the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago, as reported in the ABA Journal.
Resolution
604 adopts the ABA Ten Principles on Reducing Mass Incarceration and
urges all legislative and governmental bodies to implement policies consistent
with these guidelines. According to the Working Group on Building Public Trust
in the American Justice System, which sponsored the resolution, the principles
build on existing ABA policies related to sentencing, pretrial detention, and
court fines and fees; and they outline crucial steps that jurisdictions can
take to fully reform their criminal legal systems.
In moving the resolution, Robert Weiner, the chair
of the working group, pointed out that the United States has less than 5% of
the world’s population but nearly 25% of its incarcerated individuals.
Weiner added that those in U.S. prisons and jails
are disproportionately people of color, citing statistics showing that one of
every three Black men born in 2021 can expect to be incarcerated at some point
in their lives. He noted that this disrupts families, perpetuates poverty,
leads to discrimination in hiring and hinders upward mobility.
“The current system of mass incarceration is costly,
ineffective, unfair, racially discriminatory, socially destructive and legally
infirm,” Weiner said. “It is time we tackle this problem.”
The working group includes the following in its 10
principles:
• Limit the use of pretrial detention.
• Increase the use of diversion programs and other
alternatives to prosecution and incarceration.
• Abolish mandatory minimum sentences.
• Expand the use of probation, community release and
other alternatives to incarceration, and create the fewest restrictions
possible while promoting rehabilitation and protecting public safety.
• End incarceration for the failure to pay fines or
fees without first holding an ability-to-pay hearing and finding that a failure
to pay was willful.
• Adopt “second look” policies that require regular
review and, if appropriate, reduction of lengthy sentences.
• Broaden opportunities for incarcerated individuals
to reduce their sentences for positive behavior or completing educational,
training or rehabilitative programs.
• Increase opportunities for incarcerated
individuals to obtain compassionate release.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of prosecutors based on
their impact on public safety and not their number of convictions.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of probation and parole
officers based on their success in helping probationers and parolees and not
their revocation rates.
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