For the past four decades, the focus of criminal justice has been on criminalizing more behavior, increasing punishments, reducing the discretion of judges and juries, eliminating procedural safeguards to eliminate trials, and a focus on offenses and individuals that pose less of a risk to the personal safety of others such as drug offenses. That system has been a failure and resulted in the United States incarcerating more citizens than any country other than China and destroyed millions of families.
We can be both tough on crime and smart at the same time.
We must start with fair laws. While Virginia’s misdemeanor-felony threshold was raised to $1,000 in 2020, it still sweeps up far too many minor crimes. Felony theft should involve serious property crimes and not the theft of mobile phones or vacuum cleaners.
Virginia finally legalized marijuana but we still need to move the market out of the shadows and into an environment where the Commonwealth can tax it, earn revenue, and turn marijuana from a cost to taxpayers to a positive.
Virginia once led the world by requiring juries to render judgments on citizens instead of agents of the government such as judges. Virginia’s Declaration of Rights which was the foundation for the U.S. Bill of Rights and inspired constitutions around the world refers to the right to trial by jury as being “sacred.” The discretion of our judges and juries to determine guilt and innocence and render fair sentences has been taken away by legislators looking to substitute their judgment for that of the community after taking into account the circumstances of a crime, the history and circumstances of the accused, and the affects on the victim. This runs counter to Virginia traditions. Mandatory minimum sentences destroy the flexibility of our justice system to render justice for the accused, the victim, and all citizens of the Commonwealth.
Our Juvenile Justice system likewise requires reform. Virginians should be outraged that the Commonwealth leads the country in the School to Prison Pipeline. School Resource Offices (SRO) should be involved in detecting and investigating actual crimes – not enforcing school discipline. I was proud to support bringing statewide standards to the SRO system in 2021.
Our forensic laboratories are currently overwhelmed with drug investigations and narcotics, opiate, and other analyses are backlogged by months due to lack of funding. Virginia’s Director of the Department of Forensic Science has testified before the United States Congress that there has been a lack of resources (money, staff, training, and equipment) necessary to promote and maintain strong forensic science laboratory systems. . . . As a State Crime Lab Director, I know that this has in fact been the situation for many of us for some time.”
Many Virginia prosecutors’ offices have no or limited paralegal support limiting their ability to comply with required discovery obligations or court filing obligations.
Also, to maintain trust in law enforcement, we need to invest in technology. In-car video and body cameras are essential in protecting our law enforcement and our public from the occasional bad apple on the force.
Finally, Virginia’s cash bail system has resulted many people being incarcerated for being poor instead of protecting the public. Most studies show that reminders and keeping accused persons informed of the court dates reduces failures to appear in court more than cash bonds. Cash bonds have a place, but they should be reserved for violent criminals, not the poor or homeless with a record of missing court dates.
In 2020 and 2021, the General Assembly implemented a number of criminal justice reforms. I support these reforms and oppose legislative efforts to repeal them. These reforms include:
- Ending presumptions against bail
- Restricting the use of chokeholds
- Prohibition on no-knock warrants
- Banning shooting at moving vehicles
- Banning law enforcement agencies from purchasing military-grade weapons
- Expanding the officer decertification system
- Training officers in de-escalation techniques
- Abolishing the death penalty.
- Allowing for automatic record-sealing so that people who were wrongfully arrested or have served their time can get their life back on track.
- Allowing judges to dismiss charges
To reform our criminal justice system, we must:
- Raise the misdemeanor-felony threshold to $2,500
- Allow for the restoration of all civil rights, including hundreds of miscellaneous civil restrictions upon a showing of rehabilitation and the consent of a judge
- Reinstate parole
- Eliminate mandatory minimum sentences and restore judges and jury’s ability to render fair sentences
- Restore judges’ discretion to dismiss cases given the circumstances notwithstanding a prosecutor’s objection
- Provide full and complete discovery to accused persons
- Pay our court personnel living wages.
- Invest in funding sufficient prosecutor and prosecutor support positions to allow Commonwealth’s Attorneys to invest time is fairly rendering justice
- Install body cameras on all police officers
- Adequately fund first-class forensic laboratory services
- Reform cash bail, invest in supervised release, and use bail for violent criminals
- Prohibit School Resource Officers from involvement in school discipline
- Eliminate the felony assault by onion ring charge, where merely dropping a scrap of food on an officer’s shoe can result in a felony conviction.