A Buttigieg presidency will take bold action on criminal justice reform

Our next president will step into the Oval Office the day after the sun sets on Donald Trump’s presidency. That president must offer a vision bold enough to tackle our pressing challenges but also unifying enough to heal a country that will be more divided and vulnerable than it is now.

One area where we must urgently address this pain is our criminal justice system.

For too long America’s criminal justice system has suffered from a legacy of racism. Every day we see a system that inflicts, reflects and compounds injustice and inequality in black and brown communities. South Carolinians know this too well: despite making up 28 percent of the overall population, black South Carolinians account for 62 percent of the incarcerated population. And black South Carolinians with no criminal histories are given longer sentences than white people.

South Carolina also allows criminal history questions on employment applications, locking people out of employment opportunities.

The policies that led to this inequity were put in place intentionally, and we must be equally intentional about dismantling them.

So building on my Douglass Plan for Black America, my administration will deliver ambitious reforms to our criminal justice system.

First, we must work to reduce the number of incarcerated people in America by 50 percent. We will achieve this by taking steps that will include ending incarceration for all drug possession offenses and eliminating mandatory minimums.

And with over 43,000 young people behind bars on any given day, we will provide $100 million in grants to states to close youth prisons and repurpose them to serve the needs of children.

At the state level, we will double federal funding dedicated to decarceration efforts to ensure people are not serving unnecessarily long sentences — and we will incentivize states to process evidence backlogs to prevent people from languishing in jail while waiting for results.

We will also ensure better conditions for those who are incarcerated — preventing the next Lee Correctional Institution riot — and provide greater opportunities when they are released.

As the president of the United States, I will end the use of prolonged solitary confinement, reduce sexual assault in prisons and prioritize suicide reduction.

We will promote policies that reflect basic human decency, such as providing free phone calls for people to remain connected to loved ones and free women’s hygiene products to incarcerated women. And we will ensure that people have a real shot at a second chance by restoring Pell Grant access to the incarcerated and promoting fair chance hiring by banning the box.

Why?

Because incarceration should be about redemption as much as detention.

Finally, we will improve police training and accountability. I will increase transparency in law enforcement by providing resources to states to standardize data reporting and adopt early warning systems to flag troubling behavior by officers.

We will raise the legal standard under which officers are justified in using lethal force, and we will promote legislation to end qualified immunity to allow police to be held accountable for unlawful actions.

And when incidents do occur, they will be evaluated by a national review board — similar to how the National Transportation Safety Board assesses an aviation or highway crash — to learn how we can improve.

Scripture says, “Blessed is he … who secures justice for the oppressed.” With bold action, we can finally bring our criminal justice system in line with our deepest values.

Pete Buttigieg is the mayor of South Bend, Ind., and a Democratic Party presidential candidate. Buttigieg wrote this piece exclusively for The State.

This story was originally published October 26, 2019 at 7:00 AM.