Issue Position: Reforming Our Criminal Justice System

Issue Position

While the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery have broached the national consciousness and raised justified outrage over police brutality and white supremacy, similar atrocities -- the killing of unarmed people, predominantly Black and Indigenous Americans -- occur across the United States regularly. These are accompanied by the many other racist, ineffective, and costly outcomes that stem from our country's criminal justice system as a whole. There is no doubt we must take action.

In our community, we've witnessed these tragedies firsthand -- the deaths of Manny Ellis and Jackie Salyers at the hands of Tacoma police, and the police shootings of Andre Thompson and Bryson Chaplin, which left Bryson permanently paralyzed, in Olympia, among others. After Bryson and Andre's shooting, leaders in our community came together to address Washington's broken laws that prevented prosecution of police violence. They asked me to sponsor a bill in my first session addressing the issue. I said yes, making my first bill in the Legislature focused on ending police violence and holding police accountable.

I was committed to this issue then, and I remain committed to it now. We must enact bold change in how our country polices. If elected, I will fight in Congress to demilitarize police, implement effective and comprehensive implicit bias training, ensure civilian oversight, create a database for centralized collection and reporting of police shootings and killings, demand actual accountability for police brutality and murder, and so much more.

I support the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and Rep. Ro Khanna's Peace Act. Ultimately, we must ask Congress and our local governments to review how we invest in our community, diverting resources from ineffective and dangerous methods of policing, and instead reinvesting back into the community -- supporting programs and services that improve lives.

Beyond policing, we have a lot of work to do in our criminal justice system to address embedded racism and create better outcomes for the people it is supposed to serve. Let's start by working to prevent incarceration in the first place -- reforming our laws to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences, end the failed War on Drugs, and expand the use of addiction and mental health courts rather than criminalizing poverty, addiction, and mental illness. I will also call for the end of the inhumane practice of capital punishment.

We must break the school-to-prison pipeline by connecting kids, students, and young adults with educational, after-school, and community programs; addressing the extreme racial biases in school disciplinary methods; and committing to juvenile justice reform.

The United States has the largest prison population of any country by far, jailing nearly a quarter of all of the world's prisoners, with Black, Brown, and Indigineous people imprisoned at exceedingly disproportionate rates. The era of mass incarceration must come to an end. We must abolish private prisons that profit from keeping people locked up; end prison gerrymandering, as we have in Washington, which disfigures electoral representation; and improve conditions for female and transgender prisoners who face regular harassment, assualt, and abuse.

Marijuana should be legalized nationally with federal regulations that ensure industry safety and fairness across state borders. We must prioritize new business and local prosperity for the communities who have been most impacted and devastated by the War on Drugs, along with expunging criminal records for marijuana-related convictions.

Finally, we must do a better job supporting those who have served time and who seek to rejoin society. We should support programs that improve reentry for former prisoners, helping them develop job skills and find a career. Like we did in the Legislature, Congress must ban-the-box nationally and prevent past mistakes from limiting future opportunities. And, nowhere in America should someone be prohibited from voting because of their past criminal record.

We cannot have true justice in our country until we correct and transform our broken systems of policing and criminal justice. As your Congresswoman, I will listen first to the community members who have been most affected by these policies and systems for decades and who have been doing the work to demand reform on these issues and more. Together, we can act on the energy of this moment and the inspiring mass movement for change, and build a justice system that matches our ideals and embodies our values.

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