Democratic Leadership Is Missing in Action on Mass Incarceration

[eridani]

http://www.thenation.com/article/democratic-leadership-is-missing-in-action-on-mass-incarceration/

So what have the Democrats said about criminal justice?

Recent Democratic platforms haven’t merely been silent; they have actually called for policies creating more imprisonment, and then applauded the result. Mentions of progressive alternatives are hard to find.

In 1992, Democrats supported alternatives to incarceration, such as “community service and boot camps for first-time offenders.” But four years later the platform went in the opposite direction. It praised mandatory “three-strikes-you’re-out” laws, truth-in-sentencing provisions that limited earned early release, and “$8 billion in new funding to help states build new prison cells.”

At the turn of the century, the party still championed “tougher punishments” as a way to fix “an overburdened justice system that lets thugs off easy,” and applauded federal funding for “new prison cells” as a major success story (a clear nod to the 1994 Crime Bill, which paid states to increase imprisonment).

[Meteor Man]

1. Gov. Brown and Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris MIA

Gov. Jerry Brown's prison reforms haven't lived up to his billing

http://www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-ff-pol-brown-prisons-20140622-story.html

Combined with the war on homeless Americans mass incarceration the Democratic Party in California has done diddly squat.

America is a morbid victim of Disaster Capitalism and California leads the pack on both fronts.

We need an immediate federal prohibition against three strike laes and mandatory minimums. Federal leadership led the charge on The New Jim Crow,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow
and federal leadership is required to roll it back.

[1939]

2. Maybe the specter of 1988

hangs over them.

[Warren DeMontague]

3. Forums seeking input on the Democratic Platform will be held in "all four" regions of our country!

Yeah, all four of em!

https://demconvention.com/platform/

Mid-Atlantic – Washington, DC on June 8th and 9th (forum with testimony)
Southwest – Phoenix, AZ on June 17th and 18th (forum with testimony)
Midwest – St, Louis, MO on June 24th and 25th (drafting committee meeting)
Southeast – Orlando, FL on July 8th and 9th (platform committee meeting)

Notice anything missing, there?


I do.

[Tsiyu]

4. It's very difficult to sell the Democratic Party to kids

when they see Dem politicians with dollar signs in their eyes as they funnel more and more young Americans into the injustice system.

Our system of punishment is broken. We are letting rapists run free, and releasing violent prisoners to make room for drug users and small time sellers. We are using our INJUSTICE system to incarcerate people for non-payment of traffic tickets, turning $100 fines into $1000 fines.

Here's a hint, Democratic and Republican voters: If a working person can't afford the $100 penalty, they won't be able to pay the $1,000. Especially not from a jail cell. The injustice system knows this. But that's how they snag people to fill those profitable jail cells. Why worry yourself with dangerous people who might hurt your guards?

Just ask your state legislature to make a bunch of nonviolent, victimless shit illegal and VOILA! Instant prisoners! More than you know what to do with! Think of how wealthy your police, lawyers, country governments and for-profit prison CEOS will be! Think of the profit on commissary and phone calls! $15 a minute! Ramen noodles for $5! You can gouge these poor suckers all goddamned motherfucking, greed sucking YEAR! Woohoo!

Then, after you have over half the black males and poor whites in the system, ask why they aren't home raising their kids, or working. Watch your communities become shitholes as you take what income the locals have for yourselves. Create squalor and put people in cages so you can make an evil buck. Oh yes. I can see how slavery happens...

The kids around here had a chance to vote for a Dem DA to become judge. They chose the untested Republican. Why?

Because the Dem DA is a racist dirtbag who goes to church but who treats the kids of his neighboring county as his own county's personal ATM machines. The communities across this part of Appalachia have watched this oh-so-moral district attorney DESTROY the lives of the poorest of the poor. He knows the public defenders are a JOKE. He knows these poor kids' families are barely hanging on, and yet he gleefully and cruelly goes after them, breaks up homes, ruins families, destroys job prospects, stigmatizes and harasses the poorest of the poorest of the poor.

And the worst part? Oh, you should see how this guy drives. He is a godamned deity who in fact owns all the roads, Mr. Democratic District Attorney. He will ride your ass like a fucking PUNK when driving through town, and acts like an uncivil maniac behind the wheel. The goddamned sadistic bastard knows people are too afraid to say anything. Nice guy. Great representative of our party.

I wish some rich benevolent soul would come up here and let MR. Democratic DA run into the back of his car and sue the little weasel for everything he's worth. I'd love to see him hungry like all of his victims...



Anyhoo...no, Democrats don't give a damn, apparently. One day they will, but not today. Many are trying to act like life is ever so peachy, sorta Barbara Bushish when it comes to our INJUSTICE SYSTEM.


Ah...thank you DU for letting me vent. That asshole was behind us the other day, mere inches from the bumper when there was a small child in the car. So much for the Democratic Moral Elite NOT being a public danger.