Blogs

Blog by Charlotte Resing, Policy Analyst, Washington Legislative Office. Originally published in ACLU's Speak Freely.

It’s not often that you’ll find the ACLU on the same side of an issue as President Donald Trump. 

But in the waning days of the 115th Congress, lawmakers have the rare opportunity to show bipartisanship isn’t completely dead. For months, advocates and lawmakers have worked together to craft a criminal justice reform bill, known as the FIRST STEP Act, that enjoys broad support from the White House and members of Congress in both parties. 

Only one thing stands in the way of this piece of genuine bipartisan reform: Mitch McConnell. The Senate majority leader has complete and absolute power to bring the FIRST STEP Act to the floor for a vote. Thus far, he has chosen to stand in the way of essential reforms that will help ensure incarcerated people who have served their time have a second chance at life. 

So how did we get here? 

On Nov. 15, an updated version of the FIRST STEP Act was introduced in the Senate after the original version of the bill passed the House by a wide margin in May of this year. The ACLU and other civil rights organizations opposed the House version of the bill because it failed to address harsh sentencing laws, which are the pivotal drivers of mass incarceration on the federal level. 

Instead, the ACLU and other civil rights organizations continued to pressure the Senate to include federal sentencing reforms in its version of the legislation. Holding out seems to have led to improvements in the bill. The recent Senate version of the FIRST STEP Act, which we support, includes sentencing reform provisions that the ACLU and others have fought long and hard for. 

The legislation, however, is not without its problems. It does not retroactively apply its sentencing reform provisions to people convicted of anything other than crack convictions, it raises serious concerns that it could lead to unconstitutional government spending on religious programming, and the bill precludes individuals from benefiting from some provisions due to citizenship and immigration status. 

Nevertheless, the inclusion of concrete sentencing reforms in the Senate’s version of the FIRST STEP Act is an important improvement for advocates and directly impacted communities who have been fighting for sentencing reform for years. The provisions in this bill can directly improve the lives of people harmed by our broken criminal justice system. 

TELL YOUR SENATOR TO PASS CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORMS

The United States continues to lead the world in the number of people it incarcerates with 2.1 million people in prisons and jails, more than 180,000 of them in federal prisons on any given day. Black, brown, and poor people bear most of the burden of this country’s distinct dishonor of being the world’s top incarcerator. The Senate version of the FIRST STEP Act includes a few of the sentencing reforms necessary to begin to address mass incarceration and prison overcrowding on the federal level. 

The new version of FIRST STEP would apply the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which reduced the disparity between the crack and powder cocaine sentences from a ratio of 100-to-1 to 18-to-1, retroactively to those sentenced before the law passed. This improvement would allow over 2,600 people the chance to be resentenced. 

Retroactivity is a vital part of any meaningful sentencing reform. Not only does it ensure that the changes we make to our criminal justice system benefit the people most impacted by it, but it’s also one of the keys to reducing mass incarceration. The federal prison population has fallen by over 38,000 people since 2013 thanks in large part to retroactive application of sentencing guidelines approved by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. 

The retroactivity of the Fair Sentencing Act is a hard-fought win for people in prison serving these sentences. Unfortunately, the FIRST STEP Act would not include retroactivity for the rest of its sentencing reforms, which minimizes its impact substantially. 

The new, Senate version of the FIRST STEP Act contains several other important reforms to sentencing laws that have bloated our federal prison population and added to the racial disparities in the system. The new language expands the “drug safety-valve,” giving judges the discretion to reject mandatory minimums for people convicted of drug offenses while reducing the mandatory minimums for other drug offenses.

It also eliminates the practice of “stacking” gun sentences from the same incident on the top of the sentence for a drug crime or crime of violence. “Stacking” has resulted in countless people serving long, draconian sentences. These reforms are truly first steps to reducing mass incarceration, but they won’t apply retroactively, leaving thousands of people in prison

With the addition of these sentencing reforms, the Senate version is a modest, but important move toward meaningful criminal justice reform. But the system will not truly be reformed until every person receives a fair and just sentencing regardless of when they were sentenced. The FIRST STEP Act, if passed, truly represents the first step on the road to a more just criminal justice system.

Sen. McConnell needs to stop the obstruction and allow the Senate to vote on the bill.

Date

Featured image

Show featured image

Hide banner image

Related issues

Show related content

Tweet Text

Type

Style

• Read more about How the FIRST STEP Act moves criminal legal reform forward

Blog by Nasser Eledroos, technology fellow at the ACLU of Massachusetts

Employment opportunities in the technology industry are largely corporate. On the surface, these jobs seem fulfilling: great pay, opportunities for advancement, stock options, and other perks.

But where do you turn when you find that your dreams to innovate, engineer, and design a better future slam against the bleak reality that existing technologies often enable and facilitate great harm? What do you do when you find that the “efficiency engines” we’ve created end up subverting democracy, surveilling protected First Amendment activity, or deepening existing inequalities?

There’s a community of people and organizations, like the Ford Foundation, asking these same questions – a growing field – Public Interest Technology – where people are using their experience and skills in technology to change the world for the better. Public interest technology is exactly what it sounds like – technology used to serve justice and the public interest. Where almost any other corporate tech position has a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit for shareholders, a public interest technologist is instead asked to service the public good.

My journey as a public interest technologist began with an abrupt transition out of the software engineering world and into a new role with the ACLU of Massachusetts. My very first day at the ACLU highlighted how technology can do good in the world: Day one involved me sifting through thousands of court records to determine how many cases had been dismissed as part of the single largest dismissal of wrongful convictions in the legal history of the United States. Central to those dismissals was the work of Paola Villarreal, the Technology Fellow who worked at the ACLU of Massachusetts before me. Paola’s work demonstrated that, contrary to the prosecutors’ claims, the majority of the tainted cases were for simple drug possession, and the vast majority were low-level cases tried in district courts. Public interest technologists design and deploy technology that serves people and solves problems – in this case, identifying tens of thousands of people who were wrongfully convicted based on tainted evidence.

Public interest tech is a field that’s still being defined, but like many other jobs in the non-profit world, it involves wearing many hats. During my time at the ACLU, I’ve supported the organization as a data scientist, systems administrator, forensics engineer, graphic designer, web developer, writer, advocate, IT specialist, geographic information system engineer, and public speaker. I’ve performed data-driven investigations into how police in Boston surveil people online, supported advocacy to remedy the Massachusetts drug lab scandals, led the data work on a grassroots statewide court watch project, and taught people about critical digital security practices. The different roles share a common thread: in organizations like the ACLU, technology can – and should – be used to ward off threats, entwine policy and computer science, and take full advantage of technology’s transformative potential.

I didn’t walk into the ACLU an expert in the above topics and issues. But my job afforded me the flexibility to take the time necessary to familiarize myself with the tools, policies, and skills I would need to succeed in this role. Traditional academic disciplines often aren't built to help students learn and apply technical expertise to advance the public interest – and that should change. This summer, the Ford Foundation convened university presidents, provosts, and faculty to explore pathways for people pursuing public interest technology, to bring institutional weight to the campaign to build this career path.

As technology continues to advance and outpace policy and law, there will be an ever-increasing need for public interest technologists. Decades ago, lawyers didn’t have a pipeline into policy and civil society; institutions purposefully built this path and called it public interest law. Technologists need to do the same today. Together, we can build a field that helps organizations and government agencies navigate issues of algorithmic bias, online surveillance, digital privacy, free expression, and more. Our collective future depends on the success of this initiative.

Interested in learning more? Visit the Ford Foundation or explore the ACLU of Massachusetts Technology for Liberty Project.

Date

Featured image

Show featured image

Hide banner image

Related issues

Show related content

Pinned related content

Tweet Text

Type

Menu parent dynamic listing

Style

• Read more about A new generation of technologists fighting for a just future

This blog was written by Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts. Originally posted on Privacy SOS.

Headed home for the holidays? If you have any down time this weekend, here are three simple things you can do with your family to firm up your digital security. 

1. Install Privacy Badger on everyone’s web browsers. This neat browser extension, developed and maintained by the electronic privacy organization EFF, protects your privacy by blocking cookies that aim to track you across websites. It operates in the background and won’t interfere with your online activity. Once you install it (it’s free and only takes a minute), you can forget about it. Learn more about Privacy Badger, and find download links.
2. Make and distribute webcam blockers. Cut up some post-it notes into little squares, and give them to everyone to put on their webcams (on front-facing cell phone cameras and webcams on computers). You never know who might be watching, so get to blocking those cameras.
3. Download and install Signal, and create new family text groups! Signal is a free, secure texting and calling app that works on Androids and iPhones. While it lacks some of the latest fun features available in iMessage (like lasers and heart-reactions), it is the safest way to communicate with your family and friends. The app only works when both parties in a communication have it installed, so holidays are the perfect time to make sure everyone around the table can communicate securely. Download away!

In my family, we use a private message group to share photographs of the little ones. That way, we don’t compromise the kids’ privacy by sharing their sensitive digital images with companies like Facebook and Google, which profit off of our personal information. If you have little ones in your family, and you want them to have control over their own information, set up a private Signal group for select family and friends, and share away! Just make sure you clearly communicate to everyone in the group that your family has made the choice not to post images of the children on social media, and ask them to respect it.

Bonus: If you have more time and energy, help your family members do away with their bad password system and start using a password manager. There are lots of options to choose from. Password managers both increase your digital security and make your life easier. If you use one, you’ll only ever have to remember one password! Make it a good one.

Click here to learn more about protecting your privacy in the digital age.

Date

Featured image

Show featured image

Hide banner image

Related issues

Show related content

Tweet Text

Type

Menu parent dynamic listing

Style

• Read more about Three simple things you can do with your family to firm up your digital security