HEALING A BROKEN LEGAL SYSTEM
Michael Pope
Welcome to Transition Virginia, the podcast that examines the transition of power from Republican to Democrat. My name is Michael Pope.
Thomas Bowman
And I'm Thomas Bowman. Today on the podcast, the criminal justice reform efforts, now under consideration in the Special Session, and we got a great panel to dig into what's happening, what's not happening and what should be happening. We're joined by Claire Gastañaga, Executive Director of the ACLU of Virginia. Thank you for joining us, Claire.
Claire Gastañaga
Well, thank you for inviting me. I'm looking forward to our conversation today.
Thomas Bowman
We are also joined by Andrew Elders, Policy Director for Justice Forward Virginia. Thank you for joining us, Andy.
Andy Elders
Thanks. I'm looking forward to it.
Michael Pope
All right, well, let's get right into it. One topic I know both of you are working on is policing reform. This is one of the major things to come out of the Special Session, one of the major things expected to come out of this Special Session. And it had there's a lot of stuff under that umbrella. So let's sort of take it apart. One of the issues is pretextual policing. In other words, an officer pulling you over for something as a pretext, and then asking to search your car. So we've seen this all over Virginia with people being stopped for things like a parking pass is dangling on their rear view mirror, a light is not shining on their license plate. There's the smell of marijuana would be sort of the most well known of them. And so you have lawmakers, talking about making things a secondary offense as opposed to a primary offense so that you're not pulling someone over because of the smell of marijuana, you're not pulling someone over, because there's a parking pass from Fort Lee dangling off the rear view mirror. I talked to Senator Mark Obenshain about this and he said, "Democrats and Republicans have been adding pretextual things to the code for years in terms of cell phones, and child seats, and essentially influencing people's behavior." This is Senator Obenshain, on the dangers of pretextual policing.
Senator Obenshain
"I hear bills introduced by these social reformers every year creating new opportunities for the police to stop somebody on a primary offense. And nobody's been concerned about it. But now in light of civil unrest, on burning buildings and protests, all of a sudden, people are concerned about it."
Michael Pope
Claire Gastañaga, was nobody concerned about this?
Claire Gastañaga
No, that's absolutely not the case. The American Civil Liberties Union has been opposing, you know seat belts as a primary offense, all of these things as primary offenses in circumstances in which a person hasn't committed any other traffic infraction. And every time somebody tries to add it, we've not been made ourselves popular. But we've certainly been clear that every time you did this, the tendency was that it would increase the disparities and enforcement, and that more Black and Brown people would be hectored by the police as a result. So we've been very clear. And he's not correct that people haven't opposed moving from secondary to primary offenses.
Michael Pope
Andy Elders, what should happen in terms of pretextual policing this Special Session? What would be sort of, in your mind, the ideal outcome on this issue?
Andy Elders
Well, the bills that are currently before the General Assembly take a significant subcategory of the basis that the police have to stop people, which we call primary offenses, and reduces them to secondary offenses so that they can't stop people for things like the kinds of offenses you described. What should happen is that those should be removed as primary offenses. The odor of marijuana, which is part of the bills that have been contemplated, should not be a basis for searching people's vehicles, and overall, we should be seeking out ways so that the police have fewer opportunities to pull people over, ask them invasive questions, sit them on the sidewalk or on the curb, while the community looks on and go through their private belongings. Things like that don't happen to people like me in McLean, Great Falls. They happen in neighborhoods that are routinely over police. There are over policed on the idea that Black and Brown people are suspect, and occupy different space in our community than white people.
Claire Gastañaga
We wouldn't be in the circumstance if leaders of police departments weren't encouraging this kind of approach to policing, as opposed to a truly constitutional policing idea. There have been police leaders, in Virginia, who've done done things like said, "You may not search somebody's vehicle unless you have independent probable cause." I've been on panels with state police people who said to me, "Claire, you need to have the ACLU help people understand that they shouldn't be consenting themselves into prison." But the reality is, that the police shouldn't be asking to search your vehicle unless they have a reason to believe that you've engaged in some kind of criminal activity and some kind of probable cause. But what they do, is Andy was pointing out, is that they bootstrap and they don't pull you over because you've done something that is unsafe, they pull you over, because they want to try to catch you doing something else that has nothing to do with traffic safety.
Michael Pope
So the Senate has already passed a list of some things that they want to move from this category of primary offense to secondary offense. Talk about the differences between whatever the House has come up with and whatever the Senate has come up with. Kind of where are we right now in the discussion about changing the law on pretextual policing.
Andy Elders
Really the versions are pretty close to each other, the House version is a little more expansive in terms of what it covers. The House version has sort of a catch all for equipment violations that do not actually affect the safe driving of the vehicle. And it also adds, I think a jaywalking provision, if I recall correctly, but overall, they're pretty similar bills. It is nice to see the House version, which is a little more expansive, but certainly we would support either or any combination between them. I guess there's going to be some work to do, eventually in Crossover, assuming that the House bill passes on the floor, which I do anticipate that it will. But I think that should be a pretty easy conference. And in contrast with, you know, some bill where House's versions are farther apart.
Thomas Bowman
So everybody sounds like they're on the same page, more or less, that in theory, you want to get rid of bad actors, including when they're in the police department. Now, where the rubber meets the road, seems to be over how you decertify those police officers. So, what are we looking at, as far as what might come out of the General Assembly this year?
Claire Gastañaga
Well, this is something you know, the ACLU has been working on since, well, at least since 2017. And we are incredibly excited that for the first time, it's getting a real hearing. The Governor's Transition Team, Public Safety Transition Team, recommended in favor of including misconduct as grounds for taking away someone's state certificate to police, I call it "the license to police," because it's easier for people to understand. And so this is the first time that the General Assembly really is moving a bill forward. We had a bill introduced in 2018 and got killed in Committee. But the idea is to establish a set of statewide standards that govern police conduct, that mean that every Virginian experiences law enforcement at some level, at the same way and that those standards of conduct apply in a way that if you violate them, you can lose your state certificate that allows you to police. I mean, we have a situation now where people get fired for misconduct by one department, and then they just, you know, go down the road and get another job as a police person, because they still have their license to police. And in fact, there's an incentive for the smaller departments to hire those folks, because then they don't have to pay for the training that's required to get the certification. So we're excited. The bills have some differences, but fundamentally, they're all kind of in the same vein, which is, if you do things that are unprofessional conduct, misconduct and violate use of force policies, you do things that all of us would agree, police people should not do, you can go through a hearing process and lose your license to police. You know, the ACLU cares about due process and so we want to make sure people get a hearing, but at the same time, we don't think it's right that it currently takes a criminal conviction. You have to be a criminal to lose your license to police in Virginia right now. And that's, that's got to change and I think it will change.
Thomas Bowman
How often is this a problem? How many police officers do we think would wind up being decertified under these new procedures? Or is it a situation where we would wipe the slate clean? And these would just be the rules going forward?
Claire Gastañaga
Well, I mean, you can't hold somebody accountable to rule they didn't know existed. So it will be a forward looking process. But it does put in place, if it works, right, statewide standards, instead of just relying on individual departments to decide whether somebody's behavior merits losing their license to police. And it mandates that the local departments notify the board of Criminal Justice Services, which will be making those certification decisions. And there's a process in the Senate bill, specified in which a group of people, who a majority of whom cannot be employed by law enforcement, will be involved in developing the standards that then would be applied, prospectively, to everyone. So it's a gonna be a while before it all gets put into place, but I think there's a real commitment to move beyond the idea that every department should have different standards or could have different standards. People could experience policing differently in terms of some basic stuff, like, do you use choke holds, you know, how many use of force violations does it take before you lose your right to be a police person? All of those things. And I'm very encouraged by the idea that we're moving really clearly towards statewide standards, which three years ago, two years ago, even last January, was a pipe dream. I mean, there was just no support for statewide standards. And now there is.
Andy Elders
I think it's important to stress that while we don't subscribe to the notion that the problem with race in policing and racial justice is just a couple of bad apples. I think that is an excuse that a lot of people make. I think in point of fact, many of the structures that are in place, you know a lot of our police departments and law enforcement cultures, take people who are even well meaning and drive them through practices that result in people finding disparate racial impacts and more Black people in jail. And so it's not just bad apples. But having said that, it is certainly true, and you see it on the job as a public defender, there are bad apples. There are people who go out of their way to escalate situations, people who go out of their way to make up or exaggerate their cause for stops. And so I think decertification is one prong in a multi layered attack that needs to happen to start to bring racial justice to Virginia.
Claire Gastañaga
Yeah, absolutely true. I mean, no one would suggest that we don't need to re-imagine policing from the ground up. I mean, when people talk about the root causes of crime, I always try to remind people that a single, the single largest factor in the root cause of crime is what you choose to call a crime. So if you call certain behaviors associated with someone's mental health condition, a crime, you've criminalized, you know, mental illness, you've criminalized substance abuse disorder, you criminalize poverty, and till we stop doing that, we treat things that are public health problems as public health problems instead of criminal justice or criminal legal system problems, we're not going to address the underlying systemic, you know, issues of racial justice and the white supremacy issues that are, you know, ingrained in the system. But at the same time, have to have a mechanism for getting people out of the business. Other than that they have to be convicted of a criminal act.
Andy Elders
100%. And when you hear police officers and supervisors talk about this stuff, a lot of them want the power, too. They want to know the information from sort of a hiring and supervision perspective. So this is one of those things where you're going to find a lot of police and law enforcement types on board with some of these changes.
Michael Pope
One of the policing reform issues that has grabbed a lot of headlines, is the mandatory minimum for assaulting a police officer. So this makes it a felony charge to hit an officer with an onion ring. That's actually one of the examples that people have been talking about, or felony charge for spilling a cup of water onto the shoes of a Sheriff's Deputy. So the members of the General Assembly had been talking about getting rid of this mandatory minimum. Here's Senator Jennifer McClellan on the floor of the Senate, talking about her vote to get rid of the mandatory minimum felony sentence for assaulting a police officer.
Senator McClellan
"It repeals the mandatory minimum so that we can trust our judges and our juries to look at the facts of the case, and decide is the punishment proportionate to the crime? And that is part of what people are marching in the streets and demanding change for."
Michael Pope
But one of the people who's not out in the streets marching for change is, Senator Bill Stanley. This is what he said about the bill.
Senator Bill Stanley
"If you touch a police officer or a first responder, you're going to jail. It's called deterrence. And as many of you have stood on this Floor, previously, we need this bill for deterrence. Well, this bill, this law is already in place for deterrence."
Michael Pope
Andy Elders, if we get rid of the mandatory minimum felony sentence for assaulting police officers, are we going to lose this deterrence that we currently have built into the code?
Andy Elders
No, because no one who commits an assault on a police officer has any idea what the sentencing or punishment range is. There's this imaginary world that some people live in where they think that people who are in the process of committing crimes, a) think that they're going to get caught, b) have a full working knowledge of what the Code of Virginia has in place for punishments for the offenses that they're committing, and c) do some sort of cost benefit analysis and decide whether or not to commit the offense based on that, which is obviously preposterous. What the mandatory minimum actually does, is it keeps people who have gotten into interactions with the police, some of which they're at fault for and some of which the police are at fault for, and gives the police so much power to be judge, jury and executioner over what happens with their interaction, what kind of charges come out of it. In many cases, prosecutors who are supposed to be an independent layer of analysis in deciding what an appropriate outcome is, will simply defer to what they would say is that, they're officer, and just let the officer decide what the plea offer should be. So, as a result, anytime that a police officer doesn't like what someone does, and they start to arrest them, and the person struggles or tries to get away or complains about what they're doing, it becomes very easy for a police officer to charge them with a felony that carries a mandatory minimum sentence. And that brings extraordinary leverage when it's time for that person to decide whether or not they're gonna have their day in court or accept a plea offer.
Claire Gastañaga
I just want to underscore, you know, taking away the mandatory minimum isn't enough.
Andy Elders
Agreed.
Claire Gastañaga
It is not okay for it to be a felony in Virginia, to engage in an interaction with a police officer that does not result in injury. So, you know, spitting on the officer, throwing an onion ring at the officer, flailing your arm out, those are not things that should be felonies, and so it's an automatic felony to touch an officer today, with the mandatory minimum. Getting rid of the mandatory minimum in and of itself, is not enough from our perspective.
Andy Elders
You can get a felony without touching an officer right now. You take a step in the officers direction and the officer is afraid that you're about to do something, if you throw something that doesn't hit an officer, if you spit in an officer's direction, but it doesn't hit them, those are all felony offenses right now, in Virginia, with mandatory jail sentences.
Thomas Bowman
The incident of the onion ring is certainly high profile, but when it comes to just the general course of their duties, do they have a legitimate interest in setting aside assault on a police officer? Or does the power dynamic make that a bogus charge?
Andy Elders
Police officers sometimes find themselves in danger, and sometimes people target police officers and nothing about these bills would change the prosecutor or the judge or the jury's ability to identify serious crimes against police officers and punish them accordingly. It is not as though juries throughout Virginia hear that a police officer is the victim of a crime and discount the punishment that should be applied. Even even in Northern Virginia in Fairfax, where I practice regularly, it's not as though police officers are seen as someone who do not deserve extra protection, people are extremely solicitous to police officers in both the bench and juries. So I don't think they need extra protection, especially not in these trivial cases. In contrast, giving them so much power to decide whether or not someone faces felony charges whether or not someone gets held in jail. Whether or not someone gets a favorable plea offer, creates a real imbalance of power and this is not a time when we need to be giving police more power.
Michael Pope
Okay, so clearly there's a lot to be talking about in terms of policing reform. Let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll talk about criminal justice reform, specifically, automatic expungement and sentencing reform.
And we're back on Transition Virginia. We're talking about policing reform, criminal justice reform with the best panel we could possibly have, Claire Gastañaga with the ACLU of Virginia, and Andy Elders with Justice Forward Virginia. Let's start by talking about sentencing reform. So, Virginia is one of the few states in the country, where if you have a jury trial, you're also going to be sentenced by a jury. Now, nobody in the right mind would ever want to be sentenced by a jury, because juries give the most outrageous sentences. And so as a result, there's like a chilling effect and very few people opt for the jury trial because they don't want to deal with the jury sentencing. So this is one of the reforms the General Assembly is talking about, having judges sentence defendants who had jury trials. And we've seen widespread agreement on the policy direction, but there's this debate between the House and the Senate about how much is it going to cost and whether they're going to figure out how to pay for it. Here's Delegate Mike Mullin on that issue.
Delegate Mullin
"That is an excellent idea but it will mean significantly more jury trials, which cost more money, and take up more time. So we'll need more indigent defense counsel. We'll need more public defenders, we'll need more prosecutors, we'll need more judges. And in some cases, we may need more space."
Michael Pope
Okay so, that's Mike Mullin. And he's saying basically, "This is going to cost a lot of money because you'll have more jury trials." Senator Joe Morrissey disagrees with that. Here's what he said.
Senator Morrissey
"Any suggestion that it will increase cost because you're going to increase the number of juries, is simply false and is not borne out by the statistics."
Michael Pope
And he's looking at numbers from other states that have done this. He also makes the case that fewer people would be in jails and so the bigger picture is you would save money. And perhaps even more significant than any of that, is this is a constitutionally protected right. And so if it costs a little money to maintain it, then to pay the money, right? Andy Elders, I want to ask you about sentencing reform. How important is this as a criminal justice issue? And would this really change things in Virginia?
Andy Elders
It would change things a great deal. And it is a vital reform in the sense that there are specific statutes that carry what we call jury minimums, meaning that a jury is required to give you say, a five year sentence. Things like robbery, things like possession with intent to distribute drugs, and if you choose to have a jury trial, and the jury finds you guilty, then the jury starts at five years, where a judge could have given you probation. The reason that's so significant is in part because it dissuades criminal defendants and the accused from choosing jury trials, which is really supposed to be how we adjudicate whether or not someone's guilty. But also the Commonwealth, the prosecutors have the power to choose for you, the accused, whether or not you're going to have a jury trial. If you have a robbery case, and you want to go to trial, and you say "I want a bench trial," but the prosecutor says "No, we want to put a jury on it." Now you're stuck with a five year jury minimum. So in that sense, it's extraordinarily coercive, and it forces people into unfavorable plea agreements, when they want to have their day in court, but they don't want to choose between a mandatory five year punishment, and their options of having a jury decide whether or not they're guilty. So it's a really important reform, it could change a lot. It's a little unpredictable how it would play out once it was in place, because there's a lot of moving pieces in the criminal justice system. So it's a little hard to guess what's going to happen, but it would be very important reform.
Claire Gastañaga
And we can all contest whether the current sentencing guidelines are the right ones or not, or whether they need additional change. But the reality is that judges are given sentencing guidelines that are quite different from what these quote jury minimums look like. And juries are not allowed to see the sentencing guidelines when they make their decisions, which is just I mean, if people think the sentencing guidelines are a good rule of thumb for the judges to follow, then why wouldn't you want the juries to see them? But I think the the idea that the Commonwealth can demand that you go to a jury because they know that, that the consequence of that is that you get a tougher sentence than you would get from a judge, that's just wrong. I mean, Commonwealth, shouldn't be able to force you to have a jury. You should have the right to choose one. And if you choose to go to a bench trial, you should, that should be something that's your choice, not the Commonwealth's choice.
Thomas Bowman
The House and the Senate have a little bit different approach. Can you speak to the differences in those approaches between the House and the Senate on sentencing reform?
Andy Elders
As I understand, the two bills that currently exist, the only difference is that the House's bill, which I believe is Delegate Cole's bill, would require a 30 day advance notice to the prosecutor. That doesn't work because you don't know as an accused, what you've been convicted of, until the trial is over. And for example, possession with intent to distribute carries a five year jury minimum, where simple possession would you if you went to trial for possession with intent, and the jury found that you didn't have the intent, you did have the drugs, they could just find you guilty of simple possession, where you probably would want a jury sentence. So that doesn't work. But I do understand through some of the discussions that we've had, that I think Delegate Cole is actually going to drop that provision from the bill and then they would, it would look very much the same the House and the Senate versions.
Michael Pope
Another key criminal justice reform that we are likely to see out of the General Assembly during the Special Session has to do with expunging convictions. So if you've got like a drug conviction on your record from when you were a teenager, or some dumb assault that you did, that's on your record indefinitely. And if you're trying to get a job, it might stand in your way, if you're trying to get housing, it might stand in your way. So Democrats are kind of in agreement on the idea that old minor misdemeanor convictions should be expunged, but they're in disagreement about the way to do it. Should it be automatic or should there be discretion? So Senator Scott Surovell has taken the position that he wants judges to have discretion and prosecutors to have discretion, even Defense Attorneys playing a role. And so he's sort of mixed it in with this idea that prosecutors should have discretion to drop charges that they don't want to pursue. So this has been an issue in Arlington and in Norfolk, where the prosecutors want to not prosecute certain kinds of cases, but the judges have stood in the way. So Senator Surovell has a bill that's already passed the Senate that lays out sort of the framework for prosecutors having discretion for dropping charges, but that same bill, that's already passed the Senate, also sets out a process for expungement and it is not automatic expungement. Here's the Senator speaking about his bill.
Senator Surovell
"The bill allows for the Commonwealth and the defense to agree to an expungement of a charge, if a person fills terms and conditions. It doesn't require there to be an expungement, it just gives the Commonwealth attorney the ability to add expungement as that carrot to incentivize somebody to behave and rehabilitate themselves."
Michael Pope
But Attorney General Mark Herring is with those that would like to see automatic expungement.
Senator Herring
"I think for the relatively low level minor offenses, I think there ought to be some automatic mechanism where those records are sealed."
Michael Pope
Claire, automatic or discretion judicial discretion?
Claire Gastañaga
Well, this, there are so many intertwined parts here that we're not even talking about, including how different offenses play out and in two strike and three strike situations. Permissive expungement is a tool of the rich, you have to really understand that it's probably not likely that you're going to be able to get the best deal possible or anything. Tommy Norman tried something along these lines with respect to marijuana convictions and basically, you have to pay court fees, you have to have an attorney, you have to go through all these processes. So anytime it's permissive, you're creating additional barriers for people who already are not treated the same in the criminal justice system. And it's why we call it the criminal legal system now, because there's not as much justice as people would like there to be. So I mean, I think there's a good argument for automatic, so that there isn't a requirement that you have to go through a process. The problem is that when you get to automatic, you get to language like AG Herring was using, which is low level minor da da da da da. And so what is that? What is a low level minor misdemeanor offense that he would be willing to say, "You can automatically expunge?" And and so I think the whole conversation is you have to pick apart a lot of things that are already built into the system that presuppose that there's a cumulative impact of your behavior, and if you start expunging automatically, that cumulative impact goes away. That's okay with us, but those are the kinds of things that will make it more difficult to come to some kind of agreement about expungement and have made expungement a very difficult issue before the General Assembly in the past.
Michael Pope
Andy, is giving judges the discretion to expunge cases a tool of the rich?
Andy Elders
I mean, I think it can have that effect sometimes, yes. Here's what I would say about expungement. Look, from almost every perspective, expungement is a societal good. If you're a business looking to hire people, if you're trying to get people licensure, if you're trying to help to ameliorate some of the racial justice issues that prior convictions have created, expungement is good. We should encourage expungement wherever possible. I understand the points that both of the lawmakers are getting at, and I think that the House is going to be considering an automatic bill very shortly. I think that overall, the answer should be, we should embrace every possible solution for expungement. And so ideally, maybe you would have certain offenses for which expungement can be automatic, and other perhaps more serious or more, maybe more serious offenses where you might require a judge to sign off and to exercise discretion. I don't know why we really have to choose between them when there's such a broad field of offenses that may require, we may benefit from having expungements. The one thing I do want to say is having dealt with some of the prosecutors throughout Virginia, you do not want to give prosecutors a veto power over expungement. There are progressive prosecutors who might be more willing to do that, but we should not have completely different expungement standards from one county to the next. And I'm concerned that if prosecutors have a veto power, you're going to have counties where there are no expungements.
Claire Gastañaga
Yeah, I mean, you're exactly right. And I mean, our our report on parallel power, which is about the power the prosecutors can wield, discretion is a wonderful thing unless it's exercised in a way that punishes you as opposed to favors you. And it is a circumstance and situation in which I mean, most people think prosecutors already have the discretion to decide what to charge or not charge, and that that's part of why they have power. Obviously, in Northern Virginia, the judges who are creating a different experience for the prosecutor in Arlington and limiting the discretion that prosecutors have normally had. I mean, so it's it's one of these things where you want prosecutors to have discretion to drop charges because, you know, the the number one way to help someone not end up with with the kind of record that causes them to have employment problems, is for them not to be charged with a felony ever. Not for for them to be charged in a circumstance in which there isn't good evidence that they committed an actual crime. But at the other end of the spectrum, I agree 100% with Andy. We should have every opportunity to correct the record and to live past your worst day and some of that should be automatic and where it's not automatic there should still be a process.
Andy Elders
Michael, I do want to come back to your question about whether it only benefits the rich. I have seen bills that have been proposed both this Session and last, that would give expungement opportunities to people who got under age possession of alcohol charges, or just possession of marijuana charges, the kind of offenses that, you know, rich white kids at college tend to get and then five years later, they're looking for jobs. Those kids should get expungement, too. I'm not trying to exclude those people. But we shouldn't have a system or a set of bills that only benefits the rich white constituents of some of our Legislators as opposed to Virginians across the board, especially when we know that the criminal justice system disproportionately targets people who are not rich white kids in college.
Thomas Bowman
Regarding whether or not there's more to do, what direction would you like to see the General Assembly move in the future? Claire, I'll start with you.
Claire Gastañaga
We're gonna be working very hard to put before the voters in 2022 the opportunity to repeal the felon disenfranchisement provision that is a Jim Crow vestige that's in our Virginia Constitution. So certainly believe that that is the intersection of criminal legal reform and voting reform is to guarantee that every Virginian who's 18 years and over has a right to vote that cannot be taken away by the government. And that will allow them to become meaningful and active and continuing participants in our in our democracy. We, you know, the ACLU strongly supports abolishing the death penalty. So that's, you know, we're unrelenting about that as well. But there's a lot, with respect to criminal legal reform, even Senator Stolley, who carried the 1995 No Parole Bill, you know, will say out loud that he made a mistake by not repealing all the independent mandatory minimums that are in the in the in the Code at the same time, because the 1995 law is essentially a mandatory minimum of 85% of the sentence for everybody. So we would love to see parole reform, we'd love to see parole, discretionary parole, reinstitute, we'd love to see people begin to think about a rehabilitative mindset as opposed to a punitive one. So there are a lot there's lots systemically in you know, in a transformational way to do. But we also have to re-imagine our entire policing system. And what we use police for. I mean, Portugal, more than a decade ago, decriminalized all drugs, they had no increase in crime and no increase in addiction. They made it a public health issue that people have a right and an opportunity to get treatment for. You know, those are the kinds of changes that are going to make a difference. If we when we legalize marijuana, which we hope to do in the next Session, we need to be sure that the revenues are reinvested in the communities that were adversely affected by the war on drugs. Otherwise, why bother?
Thomas Bowman
Andy, any final thoughts?
Andy Elders
Sure. The racial justice problems in our criminal justice system are systemic. They're not things that can be dealt with piecemeal, and there's a lot of systemic reforms that we need to think about when we go into 2021. Those include, eliminating mandatory minimum sentences. They include legalizing marijuana. They include broad scale and serious pretrial justice reform to address the fact that so many people are held in Virginia jails who have never been convicted of any crime. And they stay there while everybody gets ready to do their job, which can take months or years, in many cases. There's any number of large scale reforms that need to be done. And to be frank, there just aren't enough hours in the day, not enough days in the year to do all the things that need to be done, but we're all gonna be here and we're gonna keep fighting.
Thomas Bowman
Well, that's a good place to leave it. Andy Elders, of Justice Forward Virginia. Claire Gastañaga, of the ACLU, thank you so much for being on Transition Virginia. And thank you for listening to Transition Virginia. You can find us on the web at transitionvirginia.com. You can send us an email at TransitionVApodcast@gmail.com and you can find us on Twitter @TransitionVA. You can find our podcast on Stitcher, on Apple podcasts, on Google podcasts, on Spotify and anywhere else. Listen and subscribe.
