We have to end the racist and classist prison industrial complex and do away with the death penalty. We need a system of restorative justice.
- The criminal justice system is unjust in its treatment of working class and poor people in general and particularly of African Americans and Latinos.
- The “war on drugs” has been from the beginning a racist war on black and Latino communities, and it should be ended. Drug trafficking has been tolerated and even promoted by many among the economic elite, ruining communities and then using the criminal justice system against the poor. Drugs should be de-criminalized and medicalized, and drug addicts dealt with as people with a health problem.
- The death penalty, a horrible, grotesque and barbaric institution, should be abolished, not only because it has been too often invoked against the innocent, but above all because it is an inhumane and unreasonable punishment. The American Bar Association and the American Law Institute both call for ending the death penalty.
- The criminal justice system should be reconceived on the basis of rehabilitating and restoring those convicted of crimes to society as productive citizens, finding them living wage jobs in the employment economy.
