[Peace] The newest Jim Crow - ask our Sens.: vote No on First Step Act criminal justice reform

[stuartnlevy]

Criminal justice "reform" is in the news, and a vote is expected in the Senate this week, maybe today.
I just called the offices of Sen. Durbin (202-224-2152) and Sen. Duckworth (202-224-2854).   They haven't been getting many calls on this.
If you can, please urge our Senators to vote No on the First Step Act.  Though it has bipartisan support and does make some actual improvements, it includes some poison pills - entrenching mass supervision and biased risk-assessment algorithms which are based on data from decades of past discrimination, among others.
Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow" on mass incarceration, wrote a Nov 8 2018 NY Times op-ed, "The Newest Jim Crow":
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/opinion/sunday/criminal-justice-reforms-race-technology.html
A detailed review of the First Step Act's provisions, pro and con, from Just Leadership USA:https://www.justleadershipusa.org/first-step-act-and-sentencing-reform-and-corrections-act/
It provides for moving low-risk prisoners out of prisons and onto "home confinement" - electronic monitoring.  They are still effectively incarcerated, but at their own expense.   (Electronic monitoring can cost more than rent.)   
Risk assessment algorithms look race-blind and  dispassionate, but they are built using data from a criminal justice system with a long discriminatory history, using factors that correlate with race and class.
As it stands, this bill will do far more long-term harm than good.

 -- Stuart
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