Jill Stein - Presidential PlatformPrisons & Policing
We call the United States the "land of the free" but we have the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, with over 2.3 million people in federal, state, and local prisons and jails.
Instead of addressing root causes of inequality and injustice, today's systems of policing, prisons, and criminal justice have been designed by the Wall Street parties and their wealthy elite backers to enforce a socioeconomic hierarchy that is systemically racist and classist.
We need to end mass incarceration, police brutality, and systemic injustice.
A Jill Stein Administration will guarantee as a human right a restorative criminal justice system that treats every one of the over 2.3 million people in federal, state, and local prisons and jails with respect, dignity and compassion with the primary goal of reengaging them with their families and communities.
A Jill Stein administration will:
Ban private prisons and detention centers.- Abolish the Death Penalty.
- End mass incarceration and build a system centered on restorative justice.
- End mass incarceration and build a system centered on restorative justice.
- Release nonviolent drug offenders from prison, remove drug offenses from records, and guarantee both pre- and post-release support
- Ensure drug treatment on demand
- Begin the process of legalizing hallucinogens (LSD, psilocybin and other related substances) and fund studies on their medicinal benefits.
- Begin the process of decriminalizing personal possession of hard drugs - treat drug misuse as a health problem, not a criminal problem
- Increase the number of public defenders and ensure a reasonable caseload and good pay
- Ban mandatory minimum sentencing and 'three strikes' laws.
- Abolish unpaid and underpaid prison labor
- Mandate and enforce higher standards for living conditions in prisons
- Establish community control of police with oversight boards empowered to audit police departments, issue subpoenas, remove officers, and block rehiring of offending officers
- End cash bail, fines and fees that disproportionately impact poor and working class people.
- Eliminate all 'Cop City'- type police training facilities that militarize policing and teach dangerous and abusive policing practices.
- Eliminate all 'Cop City'- type police training facilities that militarize policing and teach dangerous and abusive policing practices.
- End qualified immunity for police and prosecutorial immunity.
- Federalize all police misconduct investigations.
- Fund state and national police misconduct data collections systems.
- End the militarization of police (end the 1033 program).
- End training of US police on occupation-style policing by Israeli Defense Forces.
- End Civil Asset Forfeiture for private citizens
- Ensure the funding of community-based youth programs as a deterrent to both petty and violent crime and to reduce interactions with police.
- Investigate and prosecute sexual violence, kidnapping, and human trafficking
- Fight corporate white-collar crime with resources proportional to its economic impact
- End warrantless mass surveillance
- Pardon whistleblowers and political prisoners
- End the epidemic of gun violence with common-sense gun safety laws:
Ban the sale of assault rifles and establish a buyback program
- Establish mandatory waiting periods and background checks for firearm purchases
- Pass red flag laws for individuals who pose a danger to themselves and others
- Create standardized digital records of gun registrations and sales
- Close gun show loopholes
- Require firearm owners to own a high-quality gun safe to store their firearms
- Require firearm owners to purchase liability insurance of no less than $1,000,000
- Hold adult firearm owners criminally liable for minor children accessing firearms and using them in the commission of any crime or accidental injury or death
"O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free."-Langston Hughes