Criminal Law Reform | American Civil Liberties Union

Question 1

What are common problems in the criminal legal system?

Accepted Answer

Black people are almost three times more likely to be killed by police than white people in the U.S. In 2023, officers killed over 1,250 civilians. Across the country, racial profiling is a persistent problem, with investigations and studies repeatedly showing police stop and search people based on race and that police use disproportionate force against Black, Latine, and Indigenous people. This results in widespread and preventable harm to people of color.
People who survive unconstitutional policing encounters must contend with a criminal legal system that, due to its own racial and other biases, wrongfully convicts them or forces them to plead out to charges regardless of guilt because they lack resources or options to fight back.
Each year, more than 10 million people in the U.S are locked into local jails, and, as of 2015, there were roughly 700,000 people locked up on any given day. Most of them have not been convicted of a crime but instead can’t sufficiently afford to pay their way to freedom. Bail systems can result in wealth-based detention that force people who are poorer, often people of color, to remain locked up while awaiting trial.
Nearly 4 million people in the United States are on some form of supervision, like probation or parole. Supervision is promoted as an alternative to incarceration that helps people get back on their feet, but in reality, it drives people into jail and prison, feeding mass incarceration. Supervision requires strict adherence to dozens of wide ranging, often vague, and conflicting rules, including paying fines and fees that many people cannot afford; attending frequent meetings, which may be far from home or conflict with work or caregiving responsibilities; reporting any address change, even if they are houseless; and staying away from people with criminal records — even though one in 12 people in the U.S., and one in three Black men has a felony conviction.

Question 2

What are focuses for change?

Accepted Answer

Police discretion is instrumental in deciding who gets stopped, searched, arrested, and funneled into the criminal legal system; indeed, the United States’ over-incarceration crisis begins at the front end of the system.
Unnecessary pretrial detention and excessive sentences routinely cause injustices and are rooted in the “tough on crime” approach that has proved entirely ineffective at keeping us safe.
All criminal defendants are constitutionally entitled to effective representation of counsel. Unfortunately, a widespread lack of resources for public defense services too often means that people who cannot afford to hire a lawyer do not receive fair treatment in the legal system.
People released from jails or prisons are routinely placed on restrictive supervision programs like probation and parole. While these programs were originally intended to facilitate re-entry, they now predominantly set people up for failure and reincarceration.

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