Hillary Clinton is making criminal justice reform, mass incarceration, and policing one of the first policy areas she tackles in depth in her presidential campaign. Clinton addressed the issue in an
essay published by the Brennan Center for Justice, then at a fundraiser, then, Wednesday morning, in a speech at Columbia University.
"From Ferguson to Staten Island to Baltimore, the patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable," Clinton said, naming Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray. "My heart breaks for these young men and their families. We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America." Those hard truths?
"We have allowed our criminal justice system to get out of balance" and need to restore not just respect for the law but respect by the law. And it has to be concrete: "We need to deliver real reforms," Clinton said, before calling for a host of such reforms, including for every police department in the country to have body cameras, a move she said would "protect good people on both sides of the lens." She also called for crime prevention to be prioritized, with success not just measured by the number of arrests police make.
Clinton returned repeatedly to the economic inequality that both drives unequal justice and that results from it, noting that "It's a stark fact that the United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, yet we have almost 25 percent of the world’s total prison population," a stark fact that has consequences: "Without the mass incarceration that we currently practice, millions fewer people would be living in poverty."
That mass incarceration is something we need to change, Clinton argued, through alternative punishments for low-level offenders, reforming mandatory minimum sentences, and emphasizing probation and drug diversion programs. And "Please, please, let us put mental health back on the top of our national agenda."
Clinton's remarks were consistent with the focus on economic inequality she's signaled in the early stages of her campaign, while clearly bringing racial inequality into that theme. She didn't really court controversy, but did stake out a progressive position on criminal justice reform and opposition to mass incarceration. In short, she was the Hillary Clinton we want to see more of as the campaign goes on.
Video of the full speech is below.