SJC Exchange Library

Their new guide explains how carveouts undermine criminal justice reform and how they can entrench some of the system's worst inequities. (They include a section on fentanyl carveouts, which in recent years have excluded people using or selling fentanyl from drug law reforms.) They walk through common arguments in favor of excluding "serious offenders" from reform, offering counterarguments for advocates to respond with. Arguments (and responses) they discuss include:

• "We have to start with reforms to nonviolent charges, and we'll 'come back' for more serious charges later." In fact, as we explain, decades of legislation with carveouts has not led to a wave of legislation "coming back" to address the majority of people in prison. Rather, carveouts make later reform harder by reinforcing the flawed logic of mass incarceration.
• "Victims of violent crime want people with violent charges excluded from reform." Data show that the reverse is true: Victims of violent crime are more interested in alternatives to incarceration than in keeping people locked up.
• "Including people charged with violent offenses in reform will harm public safety." In reality, re-arrest rates are lowest among people convicted of violent offenses, and research shows that only a tiny fraction of people convicted of serious violent offenses who are released from prison later come back to prison for another violent offense.
• "People convicted of violent offenses don't deserve mercy or reform." This argument assumes that everyone convicted of a serious offense is the same, painting with an extremely broad brush. Even when the crime someone was convicted for was undeniably violent or serious, categorically excluding people from reforms ignores the immense change people can undergo following the worst thing they have ever done.

This is the newest resource in PPI's Advocacy Toolkit, which shares resources, tips, and best practices they've picked up through their work to end mass incarceration. The Toolkit's other resources include a guide to filing public records requests, a guide to sources of data about the criminal legal system, and resources for fighting jail expansion.

The new guide is here: www.prisonpolicy.org/trainings/carveouts.html