January 24, 2025
The First Step Act dismantled draconian practices that almost all Individuals knew nothing about.
Written by Dr. Topeka Ok Sam
It’s been just some days since Donald Trump stepped into the Oval Workplace, bringing a imaginative and prescient for what he calls a ‘Golden Age’ for America. With this new chapter in management comes a possibility for significant change throughout our authorities. As somebody deeply dedicated to justice and fairness, I stay hopeful that this administration will acknowledge the facility of transformation throughout the Division of Justice and work towards making a system that’s honest, restorative, and really reflective of the values we maintain as a nation.
His prior time period marked one of the vital shifts we’ve seen on this nation’s felony justice insurance policies. The First Step Act dismantled draconian practices that almost all Individuals, in the event that they knew about them, could be horrified to imagine ever existed. Earlier than the Act, it was authorized—and customary—for pregnant girls in labor to be shackled to hospital beds. Girls in jail usually lacked entry to fundamental hygiene merchandise, forcing humiliating choices between buying sanitary gadgets or making a telephone name to their youngsters. I lived via these indignities once I was incarcerated over a decade in the past.
Due to the First Step Act, these practices started to alter. But, for all of the progress made inside prisons, the processes that convey individuals into the felony justice system—investigations, indictments, and pre-trial proceedings—stay deeply flawed and in want of pressing reform.
Over the previous a number of years, phrases like lawfare, weaponization of justice, and prosecutorial misconduct have entered the nationwide dialog. Whereas these phrases usually emerge within the context of assaults on politicians and their allies, they converse to a broader, longstanding subject in our justice system.
Lawfare, or using the justice system by one group to oppress one other, just isn’t new. The Battle on Medication devastated Black communities by disproportionately concentrating on us with aggressive policing, harsh sentencing legal guidelines, and systemic bias. However at present, lawfare isn’t only a relic of the previous. I see it in courtrooms throughout the nation, used towards on a regular basis Individuals whose solely crime was being within the crosshairs of an overzealous prosecutor or investigator.
Only recently, I sat in a Brooklyn federal courtroom alongside over two dozen girls, watching a pre-trial listening to for Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz. These two girls are charged with a single depend of conspiracy for compelled labor—a cost that has echoes of the identical conspiracy legal guidelines used to destroy lives in the course of the Battle on Medication, together with my very own.
What struck me most about this case wasn’t simply the cost however the blatant misconduct surrounding it. Over 5 years, these girls endured an FBI investigation riddled with fraudulent proof, agent misconduct, and prosecutors withholding key info from their protection. Their enterprise was destroyed, their reputations smeared, and their lives uprooted—all and not using a trial.
I’ve attended a number of hearings on this case, and every time, I’m reminded of the powerlessness I felt throughout my very own incarceration. In that courtroom, I watched civil rights prosecutors defend proof tied to an FBI agent with a historical past of misconduct. I noticed them cling to the testimony of some witnesses with out rigorous scrutiny, all whereas ignoring the civil rights of the defendants.
This isn’t justice. This isn’t accountability. That is the weaponization of the legislation.
The reality is, that the identical establishments we belief to guard us could be misused to hurt us. Prosecutors could be biased, judges can favor one aspect, and legislation enforcement can cross moral traces. These aren’t hypotheticals; they’re realities. And after they happen, the impression is devastating—not only for the people concerned, however for our collective religion within the justice system.
We’d like one other First Step Act—one which focuses on stopping injustice earlier than a case even reaches trial. The First Step Act tackled inequities inside prisons; now, we should tackle the abuses that occur earlier than somebody is incarcerated.
My hope for the following 4 years is that this administration prioritizes significant reform throughout the Division of Justice. We’d like pre-trial accountability mechanisms to make sure legislation enforcement officers, prosecutors, and even judges function throughout the bounds of equity and integrity. Counting on appeals courts or post-conviction cures just isn’t sufficient. By the point a case reaches that stage, the injury—each private and systemic—has already been carried out.
Judges are overwhelmed with caseloads. Many come from prosecutorial backgrounds, which may create implicit biases. Appeals are costly and, for these incarcerated, almost unattainable to mount successfully.
It’s time for us to take the following step in reforming our justice system. Let’s set up safeguards to make sure transparency and accountability at each stage of the authorized course of. As a result of justice isn’t nearly what occurs inside a jail—it’s about what occurs earlier than somebody ever will get there. I need to see this administration utilizing its govt energy for clemency, pre-emptive pardons, remission on restitution, and full and unconditional pardons, not simply on the very finish of its time period however each month.
The First Step Act gave us a basis. Now, let’s construct on it. Let’s create a system the place nobody’s rights—whether or not they’re my buddies Nicole and Rachel or any American—are trampled earlier than their day in court docket. It’s time for a Second First Step.
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