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The Appeal: Political Report
Daniel Nichanian (@Taniel

Today in the Political Report

 

Dec. 18, 2020: The year is coming to a close, so today I propose that we stroll through what changed in states when it comes to mass incarceration and criminal justice reform—and that we start looking ahead to the biggest 2021 local election. The newsletter will be back in early January.

  • A 2020 retrospective: How states led the way—but also passed the buck—on criminal justice reform this year

  • Ohio: How years of grassroots organizing won big at the ballot box

  • Quick hits, from California, Georgia, Minnesota, New York, and North Carolina

  • New York: A key engine of the war on drugs is on the chopping block in 2021

In case you missed it, catch up with last week’s Political Report newsletter about momentous transformations in Los Angeles and in New Orleans. You can visit our interactive tracker of legislative developments, our tracker of the politics of prosecutors, and our portal on 2020’s local elections.

A 2020 retrospective: How states led the way—but also passed the buck—on criminal justice reform

Criminal justice reform advocates called for sweeping changes in this challenging year. But state officials and legislatures largely ducked the COVID-19 pandemic that is raging inside prisons and jails, and the protests against police brutality and racial justice that followed Breonna Taylor and George Floyd’s murders. With some exceptions, they forgoed the sort of reforms that would have significantly emptied prisons amid the public health crisis or confronted police brutality and racial injustice in law enforcement.

Still, on other issues there was headway, and states—whose laws and policies control a lot about incarceration and criminal legal systems—set new milestones: They decriminalized drug possession, expanded and automated expungement availability, repealed life without parole for minors and the death penalty, and ended prison gerrymandering, among other measures.

Throughout the year, The Appeal: Political Report tracked bills, initiatives, and reforms relevant to mass incarceration. Here’s a review of major changes states adopted in 2020.

The death penalty

In March, as the Trump administration was preparing to restart federal executions, Colorado abolished the death penalty, fulfilling a longtime goal for state advocates. Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, also commuted the sentences of the three people who were on Colorado’s death row. 

“The country is one state closer to having a majority of states ban the practice,” David Sabados, executive director of Coloradoans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, told the Political Report at the time. Colorado is the 22nd state to repeal the death penalty. 

Bills to outright abolish the death penalty did not move forward elsewhere. Virginia did end the secrecy that protected the manufacturers of execution drugs. Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, a Republican, vetoed a bill that would have required that witnesses be allowed to see the entirety of an execution. 

Drug policy

Oregon broke new ground this year when voters adopted a ballot initiative that decriminalizes drug possession. Measure 110 will treat low-level drug possession as a civil offense, punishable by a fine rather than jail or prison time, and it will fund public health programs. 

Advocates say the measure could transform debates around the county by offering a new model for drug policy, even as more work is needed in Oregon to reduce enforcement and inequalities.

Other states focused on marijuana reform. In October, Vermont’s legislature created a legal system of marijuana sales. Then, in November, voters in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota legalized recreational marijuana. There are now 15 states, plus Washington, D.C., where recreational use of marijuana is legal. 

Legislatures in New York and Virginia adopted laws this year that only decriminalized marijuana possession. Legalization stalled in each state, though political leaders have signaled they may push further in 2021. Separately, ballot initiatives legalized psilocybin mushrooms for therapeutic purposes in Oregon; mostly decriminalized psilocybin in D.C.; and legalized medical marijuana in Mississippi.

Finally, in Missouri and Oklahoma, voters opted to expand Medicaid, furthering a trend of voters in red states circumventing Republican lawmakers who have blocked expansion via initiatives. These two measures will grant public insurance to an estimated 500,000 people.  Among many benefits, expanding Medicaid can combat the overdose crisis and assist efforts to reduce the criminalization of substance use by enabling access to treatment programs. 

Early release and parole

With the outbreak of COVID-19, prisons and jails that are overcrowded and confined promptly became virulent hotbeds for the virus, making up many of the country’s largest sources of infections. This sparked widespread demands for public officials to take meaningful decarceral measures to protect people in prisons and jails, and the surrounding communities.

Officials responded at a glacial pace, especially when it comes to emptying prisons. “States are not even taking the simplest and least controversial steps, like refusing admissions for technical violations of probation and parole rules,” the Prison Policy Initiative wrote in an analysis

New Jersey was an exception to the general indifference: It adopted a law in October that granted many people incarcerated in the state with early release. As a result, more than 2,000 people were released on Nov. 4, in what the New York Times described as “one of the largest-ever single-day reductions of any state's prison population,” with more releases to come. 

Other states considered measures to increase early releases, often apart from the immediate context of COVID-19. And at least three states expanded parole eligibility, though narrowly. 

California expanded eligibility for the state’s elderly parole process; most notably, people will be eligible at age 50 instead of 60. Louisiana, one of the harshest states when it comes to sentencing people to life in prison, made a dent in that: Some people who have been convicted for crimes they committed as children will now be eligible for parole after 25 years of incarceration if they fulfill a list of conditions. And then there’s Virginia: The state eliminated parole in 1995, and proposals to broadly reinstate it did not move forward this year. The state still took incremental steps toward reviving it. It also eliminated sentences of life without parole for all people convicted as minors (see section on youth justice, below); it made most people sentenced between 1995 and 2000 eligible for parole; and it did the same for some people who are terminally ill.

Youth justice

Virginia abolished sentences of life without the possibility of parole sentences for minors, the 23rd state to do so.

The law, which applies retroactively, will give hundreds of people who have been incarcerated for at least 20 years a shot at petitioning for release. “It’s a huge victory,” Heather Renwick, legal director of the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, said at the time.

Via a separate law, Virginia also narrowed the circumstances in which a minor will be treated as an adult, a designation that triggers harsher punishment. But the reforms fall short of states that have ended mandatory adult prosecutions of minors and prevented prosecutors from unilaterally transferring children to adult courts. Whereas 2019 saw some major reforms that cut down on the prosecution of children as adults nationwide, that momentum did not continue into 2020. Instead, Missouri adopted a punitive law that will expand adult prosecutions and punishments for some minors as young as 14; lawmakers in Missouri who opposed the measure warned that it would primarily harm Black children.

Elsewhere, California adopted a law to phase out its youth prisons; minors will be detained instead in facilities run by county governments. New Jersey eliminated fines in the juvenile system.

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Read the rest of my 2020 retrospective for analyses of what happened on policing, fines and fees, pretrial detention, trial procedures and sentencing, voting rights, expungement and re-entry, prison gerrymandering, immigration, and more..

Ohio: How years of grassroots organizing won big at the ballot box 

Activists upended the politics of criminal justice reform and mass incarceration this year, but the scope of the changes and how they did it is still coming into view. This week, Anoa Changa reports on the years of grassroots organizing that changed conversations in Cincinnati and Columbus around police brutality, detention, and racial justice, resulting in wins for local progressives even as the state as a whole went for President Trump:

Daniel Hughes had an awakening years ago when police in his hometown of Lima, Ohio, killed a Black woman named Tarika Wilson and shot her infant son.

“At the time, there were folks who were talking about how no one will ever remember her name,” said Hughes, who is now a pastor at Incline Missional Community Church in Cincinnati's Price Hill neighborhood. “And I remember thinking ‘I will never forget her name,’ because it just awakened something in me.”

So when a University of Cincinnati police officer killed Samuel DuBose, an unarmed Black man, in 2015, Hughes decided to get his congregation involved in the fight for racial justice. They joined the Amos Project, a federation of congregations throughout the greater Cincinnati area committed to improving the quality of life for all residents. Amos is among a number of local groups that have made strides in recent years toward criminal justice reform, which contributed to a significant political shift in November.

In Ohio, where President-elect Joe Biden lost and Democrats fell short of flipping the state Supreme Court, local elections in two counties delivered progressive wins that have potential to transform the criminal legal system. Hamilton County, home to Cincinnati, now has a sheriff who wants to lower incarceration rates, along with a slate of new reform-minded judges—though voters also narrowly re-elected a prosecutor who makes frequent use of the death penalty. In Franklin County, where Columbus is located, voters elected Democrats for every judicial seat on the ballot, approved a civilian police review board, and ousted a notoriously harsh prosecutor.

Read Anoa Changa's dive into Ohio organizing.

Quick hits, from California, Georgia, Minnesota, and North Carolina

California: Upon taking office as Los Angeles District Attorney last week, George Gascón promptly rolled out major reforms such as ending the death penalty and sentencing enhancements. But some staff prosecutors who will be responsible for implementing these measures are on a media blitz against them and against Gascón “working with the public defenders,” as one assistant DA put it to KABC.

California: Assemblymember Jim Cooper is considering running for sheriff in Sacramento. Jerry Iannelli reviews his concerning record in The Appeal, including allegations he faced while a sheriff’s deputy.

Georgia: The Jan. 5 runoffs will, of course, decide the fate of the U.S. Senate. But there is more on the state’s ballot that day: A seat on Public Service Commission may seem like an obscure office, but this board was responsible for utility shut-offs during the pandemic, an issue that Democratic challenger David Blackman has spoken up about in his challenge to Republican incumbent Lauren “Bubba” McDonald Jr., as Timothy Pratt reported in the Political Report.

Minnesota: The Minneaoplis City Council decided last week to shift $8 million from the police budget to social services, and Malaika Jabali reports in GEN on the "seismic push" that has gone into changing the local landscapeon these issues.

North Carolina: State Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, a Democrat, conceded her race against Justice Paul Newby, a Republican who gave up his seat to seek the chief justice position. Newby won by only 401 votes out of more than 5 million votes cast. The confirmation of his win, after a recount, means that Republicans have swept all three of the state’s Supreme Court elections, and have reduced Democrats’ majority from 6-1 to 4-3. These elections had considerable stakes for racial justice and civil rights, Kyle Barry wrote in the Political Report

Supreme Court: We now know the results of all Supreme Court elections held around the country this year. Democrats gained three seats (one in Wisconsin in April, and one each in Michigan and Ohio in November), flipping Michigan Supreme Court’s majority in the process; Republicans gained two seats (both in North Carolina) and flipped no chamber. In addition, a justice lost his retention bid in Illinois, probably setting up a major battle in 2022.

Legislatures: How did the 2020 elections change the landscape in state legislatures? I discussed the results in specific states in November, but you can explore the big picture with a spreadsheet summarizing the changes in every legislative chamber on “What’s on the Ballot,” a project I run. Some takeaways: Only New Hampshire saw majority changes; Democrats grew stronger in New York and kept control of states that they already run and where they have advanced criminal justice reforms, such as Colorado; and Republicans defended or improved their clout in many other states where Democrats hoped to do better such as Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

New York: A key engine of the war on drugs is on the chopping block in 2021

It’s the biggest DA race of 2021: Manhattan is electing its new chief prosecutor, and big changes are on the table amid major local organizing on issues such as closing the Rikers Island jail complex. The Political Report partnered with New York Focus, a publication that covers state politics, to bring you our first story on how this election could change New York City: The future of the special narcotics prosecutor, a citywide office that has spread war on drugs-style practices, is on the line. Read Sam Mellins’s dive into what this means and where the candidates stand.

The war on drugs in New York City is fueled by a little-known but powerful office: the special narcotics prosecutor (SNP), whose powers derive in part from the good will of the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Manhattan’s election for DA next year could severely curtail the SNP. Some of the candidates in the crowded field vying to replace DA Cy Vance, who has not yet indicated if he will seek re-election, say they would push for abolishing or weakening the office.

The Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor was created in 1971 as part of Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s effort to fight the new war on drugs, which also included the infamous 1973 Rockefeller drug laws. Since 2005, the earliest year for which complete records are publicly available, the office has prosecuted over 20,000 individuals and secured thousands of prison or jail sentences.

Unlike the five borough DAs, who deal with a wide variety of cases from white-collar fraud to construction safety, the SNP prosecutes only drug felonies. The SNP is unique to New York City; no other municipality in the country has a prosecutor’s office devoted solely to drug crime.

“All they do are these drug cases day in and day about, and they overcharge. They demand really overly harsh sentences and make horrible offers in cases,” said Tiffany Cabán, a former public defender and Queens DA candidate who is currently running for City Council.

Advocates and defense attorneys are making the case that taking on the SNP is an essential part of fighting mass incarceration in New York.

“Special Narcotics is just stuck in time,'” Libby Fischer, an attorney with Neighborhood Defender Services, said of the SNP’s office, even as some prosecutors’ offices nationwide are “starting to change slowly, to come under overdue scrutiny.”

Of the eight declared Manhattan DA candidates, all of whom are running in the Democratic primary in June, four told New York Focus and The Appeal: Political Report that they would support legislative reform to abolish the SNP office. Four also said they would vote to remove Bridget Brennan, the tough-on-crime prosecutor who has led the SNP since 1998, fought proposals to reform drug laws, and cultivated a reputation among defense attorneys for pursuing low-level offenses. Brennan could be removed with the approval of three of the five borough DAs.

Perhaps most consequentially, two of the eight candidates—civil rights attorney Tahanie Aboushi and public defender Eliza Orlins—said they would withdraw the 57 assistant district attorneys that the Manhattan DA’s office loans to the SNP. This could be done unilaterally and would cut the SNP’s staff by more than half. 

“If the DA pulled their support, the SNP—one of the most horrific vestiges of the Rockefeller drug era—would soon cease to exist,” said Jared Trujillo, president of New York City’s public defenders union.

Read the remainder of Sam Mellins's dive into the SNP and the Manhattan DA race.

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The Appeal: Political Report is a publication of The Justice Collaborative, a project of Tides Advocacy

Copyright © 2020 The Appeal Media. All rights reserved.


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