Democrats Are Profoundly Committed to Criminal Justice Reform -- For Everyone But Their Enemies

Greenwald Substack ^ | 11/11/2001 | Glenn Greenwald

[edwinland]

Excerpt 1:

But one constant focus of this movement has been the need for sweeping criminal justice reform. Americans were introduced to the slogan "Defund the Police,” with some activists making clear they meant that literally, while leading progressives in Congress chanted along. Prison abolition and the evils of "the "carceral state” became mainstream progressive positions. Last May, The New Yorker heralded what it called “The Emerging Movement for Police and Prison Abolition,” noting that while some activists merely want incremental reform, for many these events "confirmed that the institution of policing should be abolished completely.

Excerpt 2:

Yet a profound dilemma is visible from the momentum of this movement: a large bulk of liberal politics is driven by precisely the opposite impulses. The most loyal Democratic partisans are frequently venerating prosecutors, advocating for harsh criminal punishments, championing punitive theories of criminal law that have long been rejected by liberal jurists and, above all else, often demanding the longest and harshest punishments in "the carceral state” for a large group of people.

Why are so many Democrats simultaneously chanting radical criminal reform slogans to abolish or greatly reduce the police and the prison state while simultaneously demanding harsh prison terms for so many people under the classic law-and-order ideology they claim to oppose? The answer is clear: Democrats believe that the only real criminals, or at least the worst ones, are those who reject their political ideology and are their political adversaries. And thus, while they work with one hand to usher in radical reforms to the policing and prison state, they work with the other to concoct theories to justify the long-term imprisonment of their political opponents, even when their alleged crimes involve no violence.

[edwinland]

Superb analysis. A $5 per month subscription to Glenn Greenwald's substack is one of the best investments I've ever made.

[Spok]

Equal justice is the last thing the fascists want.

[cuz1961]

criminal justice reform
/\

All weasel terms
have an inverted definition
built in.

Run through the weasel translator that term actually means

Criminal justice destruction.
Aka
Let the criminals walk free of consequences of punishment.

[cuz1961]

Aka

Reward the criminals
Punish the law abiding

Spit.

[Jeff Chandler]

Tagline. Read.