Platform 2012: Criminal Justice

Criminal Justice

Promoting strong families and safe communities is the highest goal of our society. Crime prevention and rehabilitation are essential to our families, our communities, and our state's budget. Current law enforcement-supported research demonstrates that, historically, a ten percentage-point increase in graduation rates reduces murder and assault rates by approximately twenty percent; in light of this, we support increasing high school graduation rates through evidence-based methods that include structured pre-school for all, anti-truancy measures, and after-school programs. We are determined to put an end to family violence, gang activity, drug and alcohol addiction, unemployment, poverty and racism. We are dedicated to ensuring that our criminal justice system provides fair and equitable treatment for all. We believe in the human rights of all citizens. "Smart on crime" must include evidence-based criminal justice prevention programs as the best use of taxpayer funds.

To promote safe communities, California Democrats will:

• Provide state-of-the-art equipment and training in the latest crime fighting techniques to law enforcement;
• Enhance victim-witness advocacy that respects the rights of crime victims and provides them with therapeutic assistance and financial compensation, and support comprehensive services for the victims of crime;
• Strictly enforce fair penalties for all violent crimes, especially those committed against women, children, the elderly and disabled;
• Support the establishment of a non-partisan sentencing commission to review inequitable sentencing laws;
• Reduce prison overcrowding and the drain on our economy by decreasing penalties for minor drug offenses and other victimless crimes, thus making the punishment fit the crime;
• Implement community-based policing to break down barriers between law enforcement officers and the people they serve; support community-based groups to work within existing social and criminal justice programs to foster communication with law enforcement; and require greater accountability from law enforcement organizations to the communities they serve;
• Promote responsible gun ownership and reasonable gun safety and work with gun owners and sporting associations to promote gun safety education;
• Strengthen the efforts to keep guns out of the hands of children and criminals;
• Continue to support the common sense ban on deadly assault weapons;
• Prosecute white-collar criminals and improve methods for recovering financial losses;
• Protect consumers against identity theft and violations of privacy and ensure they know what personal information is collected by businesses and government (such as social security numbers, financial data, phone numbers, street and email addresses) and how that information is used;
• Employ DNA testing when appropriate to ensure that innocent people are not convicted, that innocent people who have been convicted are exonerated and, conversely, that guilty people are not set free;
• Prohibit the use of so-called "secret evidence" in courts and tribunals;
• Challenge the practice of profiling, from detainment through charging and sentencing;
• Oppose using prisons and jails as defacto mental health facilities and fight to fully fund community mental health and substance abuse programs;
• Promote strong families and communities by reducing prison recidivism and making rehabilitation, education certification and job readiness top priorities within our state prison system;
• Promote dialog that examines the inequity between public school funding and prison expansion in California, and support efforts to address high school dropout rates;
• Oppose privatization of prisons;
• Limit the use of solitary confinement to only exceptional cases, for as short a time as possible and only as a last resort as there is broad consensus among mental health professionals that long-term solitary confinement exposes prisoners to extreme psychological harm; prohibit solitary confinement of prisoners with mental illness, children under the age of 18, and death row and life-sentenced prisoners by virtue of their sentence; prohibit the intentional use of solitary confinement to apply psychological pressure to prisoners;
• Support the development and implementation of restorative justice programs at all levels of the criminal justice system that bring together offenders, victims, and community members in a effort to repair the damage caused by criminal activity through accountability and rehabilitation;
• Promote prison reform policies so that no person incarcerated in any jail, prison, or other place of criminal detention within the jurisdiction of any level of government (state, local or federal) shall suffer physical violence inflicted by other inmates or by guards, other than what the latter must do to subdue someone they are legally entitled to subdue;
• Oppose sentencing juveniles to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (LWOP);
• Replace the death penalty with a term of permanent incarceration, which will serve to protect the public, provide swift and certain justice for victims' families, and save the state an estimated $1 billion over the next five years; and
• Reform the "Three Strikes"/Proposition 184 law to provide judges with more sentencing discretion, eliminate non-violent, non-serious crimes from the application of this law, and make the change apply retroactively.