Mrs. Clinton, who suggested that police violence can feel like terrorism, wants to end arrests for low-level offenses.
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Prior to answering a question about her white privilege, but after acknowledging the “systemic racism” built into the American criminal justice system, Mrs. Hillary Clinton suggested that police violence can feel like, and be perceived as terrorism.
“I think that when you have police violence that terrorizes communities… that doesn’t show the respect that you’re supposed to have from protecting people in your authority … that can feel, also, terrorizing,” said Mrs. Clinton, a Democratic Presidential candidate who doesn’t necessarily differentiate domestic terrorism from the acts of terror perpetrated by foreigners. “We have all kinds of threats in this country, I wouldn’t discount any of them, I take them all seriously,” she added.
Mrs. Clinton at the Brown & Black Forum in Iowa yesterday said that policing reform, along with major changes to the criminal justice and prison system, must be “the highest priority of the President.”
In part due to the Black Lives Matter movement growing in cities across America, and the high cost of incarceration, policing and criminal justice reform has become a priority for most top-tier politicians, like Mayors, Governors, the President himself, and a few who seek to replace him.
For example, in Philadelphia last week, a communication from the Office of the Mayor depicted a government serious about reforming the system of incarceration by reducing the prison population by 34% over three years.
And Mrs. Clinton, if elected President, would aim to reduce the prison population nationally simply by ending “the incarceration of people for low-level offenses.”
Mrs. Clinton said it cost about $3,000 a year to place someone in a diversion program, and $30,000 annually to incarcerate them. And though she referred to the financials, Mrs. Clinton portrayed herself as a person more concerned with the fairness of the system, rather than one who wants to reform it because it’s draining cash from the government.
“Blacks and Latinos get arrested faster for doing the same thing a white man does,” Mrs. Clinton, who wants clearer standards for arrests, said.
In 2011, Mr. Tony Payton, then a Pennsylvania State Representative for the 197th District, in a speech to an auditorium full of returning citizens foreshadowed these types of reforms, but said it would be about cost, not the humanity of those impacted by a broken criminal justice system.
“When there’s a scarcity of resources, said Mr. Payton, a black man, “some of the folks that don’t look like us, begin to think about ways we can improve the criminal justice system.”
At the time of the speech, Mr. Payton said the conversations of reforms were just talks, and no action was planned. Nearly five years later, however, there’s visible movement in those areas, and regardless of the motive, the impending reforms, I assume, are welcomed by a majority of Americans.
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