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Proposal Details

Proposal ID	479
Proposal	PLATFORM: Criminal Justice
Presenter	Platform Committee presenter, Georgia Green Party sponsor
Floor Manager	David Strand
Phase	Closed
Discussion	07/19/2010 - 08/08/2010
Voting	08/09/2010 - 08/15/2010
Result	Adopted
Presens Quorum	31 0.6666
Consens Quorum	71 0.6666 of Yes and No Votes

Background

GPUS Bylaws Article IX. Platform

9-1.1 The GPUS Platform represents policies upon which most Greens would agree and serves as a basis for Green Presidential and Congressional campaigns. The Platform may only be amended as provided by this Article.

9-1.3 In even numbered years in which there is no Presidential Nominating Convention, the National Committee shall be the decision-making body responsible for amending the platform. The process shall be as established in the GPUS Rules and Procedures.

9-1.4 Amendments to the Platform may be submitted for consideration by any accredited state party or caucus, or any committee whose Mission Statement authorizes it.

Proposal

Amend the 2004 Platform of the Green Party of the United States in Article II., related to “Social Justice”; Section H., related to “Criminal Justice”, by inserting prior to the opening paragraphs, the following:

With less than five percent of the world’s population, the United States locks up nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners. More than forty percent of those 2.3 million locked down come from America’s black one-eighth. The Green Party recognizes that our nation’s ostensibly color-blind systems of law enforcement and crime control, from police practices to prosecutorial prerogatives, to mandatory sentencing and zero-tolerance have effectively constituted an ubiquitous national policy of racially selective mass incarceration, a successor to Jim Crow as a means of social control, a policy that must be publicly discussed, widely recognized, and ultimately reversed.

The nearly universal, though largely unspoken nature of this policy makes piecemeal reforms not accompanied by public discussion of the larger policy ineffective outside the context of a broad social movement. Only a broad and multifaceted grassroots social movement can accomplish this goal, and the Green Party must contribute to that movement by running candidates for office at every opportunity who publicly draw attention to the nation’s swollen carceral state, and its failed, malevolent social experiment with racially selective mass imprisonment.

In addition to the Green Party’s prior positions on felony disenfranchisement, the provision of medical care, human and civil rights, and educational opportunities to those in prisons and jails, opposing state and federal three strikes laws, the incarceration of juveniles with adults and related matters, the Green Party favors the radical shrinkage of the nation’s enormous carceral apparatus, the sunset of all existing mandatory sentencing laws and the institution of racial and ethnic disparity impact studies for new and existing categories of offenses.

Resources

Time line: Compilation into new 2010 GPUS Platform upon completion of the voting on all proposed amendments.

Resources: Time and effort of volunteers to compile the platform

References

Read online information published by the proposal sponsor at: http://www.accgreenparty.org/gpga/?q=Platform/GPotUS/ProposedRevisions/ChallengeMassIncarceration.

Visit the Platform Committee webpage for this proposal at: http://www.gp.org/committees/platform/comments/?p=576.

On the webpage, you can see various formats of the proposal created by the GPUS Platform Committee and the amendment proposal sponsors including the 2004 and 2010 texts side-by-side. You can also read and respond to comments from Greens around the country, including many who are not on the Green National Committee.
Here is the 2004 text which of the "Criminal Justice" section:

Our criminal justice system is inhumane, ineffective, and prohibitively expensive. The breaking of the bonds of community and the economic and social root causes of crime must be addressed. Retribution has replaced rehabilitation. Prison terms are becoming longer, and we are building more prisons. The majority of prisoners are serving terms for minor property and drug crimes or violations of their conditions of parole or probation. Poor and uneducated minorities are over-represented in the prison population.

The effects of imprisonment are largely negative. Prisoners are increasingly isolated from the communities they came from and are often denied contact with the outside world or the media. Access to educational and legal materials is disappearing. Boredom and hopelessness prevail. The United States has the highest recidivism rate of any industrialized country. Rape is a serious problem in prison. The increasingly widespread privatization of prisons renders some prisoners virtual corporate slaves.

Law enforcement is placing too much emphasis on drug-related and petty street crimes, and not enough on prosecution of corporate, white collar, and environmental crimes. Defrauding someone of their life savings is the same as robbery. Spraying pesticides while workers are in the fields, negligently maintaining dangerous workplaces that result in death or maiming, or dumping toxic substances should be treated the same as other crimes.

At the same time, we must develop a firm approach to law enforcement that directly addresses violent crime, including trafficking in hard drugs. Violence that creates a climate of further violence must be stopped.

Police brutality has reached epidemic levels in the United States and we call for effective monitoring of police agencies to eliminate police brutality.

We support a citizen’s right of access to justice. Our system of justice must be made convenient to rich and poor alike, guarding it against big business’ attempts to regulate and, in effect, control our civil justice/civil jury system.

The Green Party proposes the following policies:

Alternatives to Incarceration

1. Any attempt to combat crime must begin with restoration of community. We encourage positive approaches that build hope, responsibility and a sense of belonging. Prisons should be the sentence of last resort, reserved for violent criminals. Those convicted of non-violent offenses should be handled by other programs including halfway houses, electronic monitoring, work-furlough, community service and restitution programs. Substance abuse should be addressed as a medical problem requiring treatment, not imprisonment, and a failed drug test should not result in revocation of parole. Incarcerated prisoners of the drug war should be release to the above programs.

2. Prisons are presently serving some of the population formerly held in the mental health system. Ninety-five percent of those who commit suicide in jail or prison have a diagnosed mental disorder. Mentally ill prisoners need separate psychiatric facilities providing psychological and medical care, rehabilitation, and release to appropriate community mental health facilities.

3. The aging of our prison population will lead to huge needless expenditures in the next decade. Prisoners too old and those too infirm to be a threat to society should be released to less expensive, community-based facilities.

4. Juvenile offenders must not be housed in needlessly restrictive settings. They must never be housed with adults. Their education must continue while in custody. A single judge and a single caseworker should be assigned to oversee each juvenile’s placement and progress in the juvenile justice system.

5. Our parole system is a failure. Reduction of recidivism should be a goal of parole. Parole should be treated as a time of reintegration into the community, not as a continuation of a person’s sentence. Parolees need community reentry programs before release. Paroled prisoners should have access to education, drug treatment, psychological treatment, job training, work and housing. Their persons and homes should not be subject to search without reasonable cause. Appropriate services should also be available to the members of a parolee’s family, to help them with the changes caused by the parolee’s return.

6. We call for more funding for rape and domestic violence prevention and education programs, and stiffer sentences for people convicted of domestic violence.

Prison Conditions

7. Private prisons should be illegal. Corrections Corporation of America ranks among the top five performing companies on the New York Stock Exchange during the late 1990’s, and operates the sixth largest prison system in the country. These prisons treat people as their product, and provide far worse service than government-run prisons. Profits are derived from understaffing, which severely reduces the acceptable care of inmates.

8. Prison conditions must be humane and sanitary and should include heat, light, exercise, clothing, nutrition, libraries, possessions, and personal safety. Prisoners are entitled to psychological, drug, and medical treatment, including access to condoms and uninterrupted access to all prescribed medication. Isolation of prisoners from staff and one another should be minimal and only as needed for safety.

9. Prison officials must institute and enforce policies that discourage racism, sexism, and homophobia in prison. End racially segregated housing.

10. The First Amendment rights of prisoners must not be revoked. Prisoners have the right to talk to journalists, write letters, publish their own writings, and become legal experts on their own cases.

11. Encourage all prisoners to have the opportunity to obtain a G.E.D. (high school equivalency diploma) and higher education. Inmates who earn a diploma have a recidivism rate of 10%, compared with 60% for other inmates.

12. Prisons should be community-based where possible. Where they are not, transportation for visits should be made available and subsidized. Unless the reason for imprisonment indicates otherwise, parents should have access to their children if it is in the interest of the child.

13. Incarcerated individuals should retain the right to vote by absentee ballot in the district of their domicile, and should retain the right to vote during parole. [See section B. Political Participation in chapter I]

14. We support the reinstatement of voting rights and the right to hold public office to ex-felons who have completed their prison sentence.

Legislation

15. Establish programs to strengthen self-help and community action through neighborhood centers that provide well-funded legal aid, alternative dispute-resolution practices, mediated restitution, community team policing, and local crisis/assault care shelters.

16. Establish elected or appointed independent civilian review boards with subpoena power to investigate complaints about prison guard and community police behavior.

17. Maximize restrictions on police use of weapons and restraining techniques such as pepper spray, stun belts, and choke holds.

18. Abolish the death penalty.

19. Repeal state “Three Strikes” laws. Restore judicial discretion in sentencing, as opposed to mandatory sentencing.

20. Freedom on bail must be the right of all defendants charged with non-violent crimes. Mental health and social services should be incorporated in the bail agreement. Laws giving prosecutors the power to deny defendants the right to remain free on bail must be repealed.

21. Stop forfeiture of the property of unconvicted suspects. It is state piracy and denial of due process.

22. Implement a moratorium on prison construction. The funds saved should be used for alternatives to incarceration.

23. Compensation for jurors should be increased and child care provided for those serving on a jury. Employers should be encouraged to continue paying an employees’ wages while they serve.

24. Thoughtful, carefully considered gun control laws such as the “Brady Bill” and the waiting period for record search before gun dealers may sell a gun should be supported.

25. Enact tough DWI (driving while intoxicated) laws.

26. A consistent policy of protection against violence in schools should be developed and enforced.

27. Victims’ rights must be guarded and protected. Victim-impact statements are a method for achieving full justice, and restitution should be considered in many cases.

28. We call for decriminalization of victimless crimes. For example, the possession of small amounts of marijuana.

29. We call for legalization of industrial hemp and all its many uses.

30. We call for an end to the “war on drugs.” We support expanded drug counseling and treatment.

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