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

[Debra Schrishuhn]

Yeah it’s a bad bill. Done. Who’s next?

Sent from my iPhone

> On Dec 17, 2018, at 9:43 AM, stuartnlevy via Peace <peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> 
> 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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