Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.), democratic socialist and member of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D., N.Y.) “squad,” on Thursday released a comprehensive proposal to overhaul America’s criminal justice system.
The plan, according to Pressley’s office, is designed to fix a “racist, xenophobic, rogue, and fundamentally flawed criminal legal system,” replacing it with a system that is “smaller, safer, less punitive, and more humane.” The result is not a legislative proposal, but a resolution that outlines broad goals and lacks concrete details for implementation.
Pressley’s proposal goes beyond the criminal justice reform platforms floated by 2020 Democrats—including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), whom Pressley has endorsed and campaigned with. The Pressley plan is perhaps best read as a laundry list of what the left wing of the Democratic Party would implement at the national level, and what local and state-level progressives are already implementing.
Pressley’s plan lays out a broad framework—”a community-led platform of justice, freedom, and safety”—followed by a wish list of policies that the freshman congresswoman would like to see implemented throughout the nation. Front and center is the decriminalization or legalization of so-called victimless crimes, primarily in the name of reducing mass incarceration. Pressley’s plan would decriminalize prostitution—a crime that accounted for just 0.3 percent of arrests in 2018. In order to “decriminaliz[e] addiction,” it would also legalize marijuana, a drug responsible for less than 1 percent of current incarceration. – READ MORE