Criminal Justice Reform
Legislative Imperatives
Decriminalize poverty and end racist law enforcement
End the war on drugs, substance abuse is a public health crisis and we need public health-centered solutions
End mass incarceration, by eliminating cash bail, for-profit prisons, and mandatory minimum sentencing
MY PLATFORM:
Under the current criminal legal system, the fundamental rights of liberty and justice are not guaranteed to all. Instead, there is a lottery system where race, economic status, and neighborhood influence the probability of receiving fair treatment under the law. The long shadow cast by the racially motivated war on drugs continues to impact our community and affects access to rehabilitation, rates and lengths of incarceration, and employability.
While Massachusetts has been applauded for its recent criminal justice reform bill, there is significant work to do to close the justice inequality gap: the same bill that abolished some mandatory minimum sentences introduced new ones. These types of sentences deprive judges from granting leniency based on individual circumstances and influence the types of charges pursued. The Institute for Justice graded each state on its civil forfeiture laws, under which law enforcement can seize property allegedly connected with criminal activity. Massachusetts had the distinction, shared with only one other state, of earning an “F” grade due to the low bar for seizing property, the burden on the innocent to prove their innocence to recover their property, and law enforcement’s high incentive to declare a crime has been committed since they keep what they take.
While racist policing and prosecution, in tandem with the systemic racism of the housing and education system, result in hungry and houseless MA citizens being arrested and incarcerated for the crime of stealing food or finding shelter, corporate bad actors run rampant. The epidemic of wage theft has overwhelmed the capacity of our existing labor laws and enforcement mechanisms to the tune of nearly $700 million in wages stolen from about low-wage workers each year in Massachusetts. These are not unrelated issues. In order to end racist policing and reform the criminal legal system, we must address access to affordable housing and equitable employment in addition to addressing corporate crimes.
I plan to address these issues by championing justice reform that focuses on putting people and our communities first.
We will fight to
Decriminalize Poverty and Defund the Police
End Broken Windows Prosecuting. Stop prosecuting crimes of poverty and instead go after wage theft and bad landlords.
End Civil Asset Forfeiture. Police are incentivized to seize property because that money goes to their budgets. No police department should receive financial benefit from arrests.
Require Racial and Economic Impact Analyses of All Charges. The public has a right to know the economic and racial impact of charges filed.
Require DA offices to make publicly available their lists of police officers who should not be called as witnesses at trial because they have lied in the past. These are known as “Brady” lists and most DA offices keep such lists, but refuse to release them to the public.
End Mass Incarceration
End Cash Bail. Cash bail penalizes people before they are judged guilty and creates two systems of justice – one for the wealthy, one for the poor.
End For-Profit Prisons and detention centers. End for-profit greed in our criminal justice system, top to bottom by: by banning for-profit prisons and detention centers, ending cash bail, and making prison and jail communications, re-entry, diversion and treatment programs fee-free.
Advocate Against Death by Incarceration. Too many people die in prison. Indefinite incarceration is wrong; parole should be presumed.
We must reform the existing prison system until such time as mass incarceration is meaningfully ended. We must guarantee that prisoners in MA have meaningful rights, which means a robust “Prisoners Bill of Rights” and access to the means to ensure that such rights are respected, and to seek redress when they are violated.
Ensure due process and right to counsel by vastly increasing funding for public defenders.
provide comprehensive mental health care to both incarcerated communities and law enforcement.
End the school-to-prison pipeline; remove all law enforcement officers from schools.
End the War on Drugs.
Treat Substance Use Disorders as a Medical Issue. All evidence points to treatment, not incarceration, as the best way to mitigate harm from substance use. Doctors and nurses, not police, are trained to handle these issues.
End the practice of sending police officers with ambulances on every 911 call, no matter the emergency.
Create a separate emergency response team specifically for mental-health and substance-related emergencies.
Deploy Harm-Reduction Strategies to Combat the Opioid Epidemic. More Americans die from overdoses than car accidents. We must provide first responders, teachers, employers, and organizations across Massachusetts with naloxone and other life-saving interventions, including educational outreach and overdose training.
Work with Safe Injection Facilities. Testing for drug impurities and providing medical treatment to people suffering from use disorder can save thousands of lives. Facilities providing these services reduce overdose deaths in surrounding areas by 30% and help communities heal. Each site reduces epidemic-related costs by millions of dollars and provides critical services that meet people where they are.
Transform the way we police communities by ending the War on Drugs by expunging past convictions, treating children who interact with the criminal legal system as children, reversing the criminalization of addiction, and ending the reliance on police forces to handle mental health emergencies, homelessness, maintenance violations, and other low-level situations.
Center Community Solutions.
Let Community Groups Decide Response to Local Gun Violence. Evidence shows communities know how to best deal with gun violence. Representative Uyterhoeven will listen to and respect their desires.
Expand Survivor Services Unit. Survivors of violence and crime need help to resume their lives, not more trauma or lengthy legal process from inconsiderate or paternalistic prosecutors that do not respect survivors’ wishes.
Decarcerate and Restore Communities.
Establish a Retroactive Release Unit. People currently incarcerated for offenses that are no longer being prosecuted will be released.
Establish a Record Review Unit to Clear Records. Convictions for offenses that are no longer being prosecuted should not prevent people from being employed or getting housing.
Reverse the criminalization of communities, end cycles of violence, provide support to survivors of crime, and invest in our communities.
Create a Reentry Services Unit to Reduce Recidivism. The best way to prevent repeat offenses is to provide people leaving prison with the basics every person needs to live in society, such as housing, job help and education.
Protect Immigrants from Fraud and Abuse. Immigration is not a crime; it is the foundation of our country. Too many abuse our immigrant communities and use fear of deportation against them. ICE is an abusive, renegade agency. Families have a right to be together, and Representative Uyterhoeven will fight for that right.
Establish alternative Parole Boards. The Parole Board is a bottleneck to decarceration. To quicken the pace of decarceration, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, we need to widen this bottleneck.
Tackle Corporate Crimes.
Investigate and Prosecute Abusive Landlords. Bad landlords should not be landlords. If they have property in Somerville, they will be held accountable in Somerville. Bad landlords will be forced to provide adequate housing.
Hold Drug Companies Accountable for Overprescribing. Prescriptions motivated by profit, not public health, rake in billions of dollars at the expense of individuals. Companies and doctors that over-market or overprescribed these drugs, despite knowing their dangers, must be brought to court.
Establish Corporate Crime, Consumer Protection, Wage Theft and Antitrust Legislation. Discriminatory, monopolistic practices and fraud can destroy neighborhood economies. Employers stealing wages forces people to make drastic choices to survive.
What we’ve delivered so far
Secured 250K for New England Innocence Project, Inc. supporting exonerees
Worked with advocates and colleagues to secure no cost calls and emails for incarcerated individuals. This is one of the most effective tools in cutting down on recidivism is to allow incarcerated individuals to maintain steady contact with their families, thereby creating a smoother transition upon re-entry to society
Authored a constitutional amendment forward that would restore the right to vote for incarcerated individuals