The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is calling for some 50,000 inmates to be freed from U.S. prisons, Fox News reports.
The organization is arguing that this large scale release of prisoners is needed to combat “systemic injustice.”
Can’t be serious
The initiative was announced by ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero.
“Across the country, people are rising up to demand change,” he said. “They are calling for an end to the systemic racism that has defined so much of the American experience, particularly in the criminal legal system.”
Romero continued: “There are 1.3 million people trapped in state prisons, most of whom are Black and Brown and all of whom are being denied real opportunity for hope, healing, and redemption. Governors across the country could — and must — bring an end to this, and many of them have the power to do that unilaterally through the power of clemency.”
Through the initiative, which has been named “The Redemption Campaign,” the ACLU in the coming years will attempt to pressure governors into granting mass clemencies, turning “the concept of clemency from a case-by-case extension of individual mercy into an essential systemic response to decades of racist, punitive, and degrading incarceration.”
Some of the prisoners the ACLU wants to be released, according to Fox, are “‘older incarcerated people,’ ‘people convicted of drug distribution and possession offenses,’ ‘people incarcerated for technical probation or parole violations,’ and people who would have received a lesser sentence if convicted under current laws.”
The broader picture
This is all part of the more general push to reform the criminal justice system, something that has especially picked up pace after the death of George Floyd. But, we have already seen all kinds of attempts by Democrats at this sort of thing – at getting criminals out of prison – and the end result is often tragic.
Fox News, for example, has recently reported on an incident involving a man accused of raping a woman who was let out of jail because of concerns about the coronavirus. Upon being released, he proceeded to kill his accuser.
In a separate article, Fox News reported that after the Massachusetts Bail Fund helped to free a man convicted of rape, he kidnapped, beat, and raped another woman.
And, these stories, unfortunately, are a dime a dozen.
Sometimes, people are in jail for a reason. The ACLU needs to be stopped, for all of our safety.
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