When talking about justice reform and what it entails, it’s easy to shift the conversation only to what makes us feel better, like the system might auto-correct if we just sit back, perhaps retweet something with a snarky comment, and let it work itself out. This part of us looks for easy answers to difficult questions, and quixotically hopes our elected leaders, appointed officials, law enforcement officers will notice their own acts of oppression, feel bad, and stop that mess.
This is what might lead an average American who vaguely thinks we incarcerate too many people to see Donald Trump’s Super Bowl ad using Alice Marie Johnson’s sentence commutation to proclaim himself a criminal justice reformer and believe him at his word. After all, there is no denying that Alice Marie Johnson, who was arrested, tried, and convicted for a drug violation during the crack epidemic, perhaps the most punitive period in world history, would still be rotting in prison on a sentence that most of us agree is egregiously incongruous with the crime of which she was convicted, if not for the intervention of President Donald J. Trump on behalf of fellow reality TV celebrity Kim Kardashian. We see Johnson now as a criminal justice advocate aligned with Trump, Koch Industries, and Right on Crime and tell ourselves, depending on our political leanings that either 1) she represents the success of the conservative criminal justice reform movement, or 2) she is a tokenized black woman who paid for her freedom in subservience to celebrity and corporate power.
There is undoubtedly some truth to both of these conclusions, but both lead us away from movement forward on the road to recovery from our addiction to incarceration. They also lead us to make a contentious dialectic out of one of the most urgent cross-partisan issues of our time. To illustrate this point, I’d like to juxtapose Trump’s tokenism with the current backlash to bail reform in New York City among conservative politicians, corporate for-profit media, and moderate citizens who really want to trust our elected and appointed officials to do the right thing.
First, as long as Donald Trump is president, the conservative vision for justice reform will be the only one on the table at the national level. It makes sense, then, to start with what conservatives mean by justice reform. Put simply, conservatives only seek reform that will least disrupt the carceral apparatus itself, in ways that are mostly cosmetic. Alice Marie Johnson’s freedom, while immensely and intensely important to herself and her family, is merely a token of similarly unjust cases of state-sanctioned confinement like hers. Conservatives’ primary aim in justice reform is not to eliminate these practices but to make them, in the language of the market, “incentive-based” and “proportional” while skirting the issue of whether incarceration is even the proper response to crime in the name of rehabilitation and community safety. Or, more pointedly, whether rehabilitation and community safety actually are the goals of law enforcement as currently practiced, especially in urban communities.
Which leads us to bail reform in New York City, which after a month officially in effect has seen hundreds of people released from Rikers Island, the Tombs, and other city jails who were awaiting trial on non-violent offenses, many of which, like Alice Johnson’s, are drug-related. Conservative politicians upstate are going full-on Willie Horton with every case of perceived recidivism they can locate, the Post and the Daily News parrot racist claims by the NYPD that New York is now a less safe place with all these black and brown folks waiting for the due process promised them by our constitution at home rather than in jail, and some people who saw the need for this legislation if we mean to hold our courts accountable to the precepts of justice they swore to uphold are now getting scared of having all these Alice Johnsons back in the communities instead of behind bars. This is the difference between real justice reform and Super Bowl ad justice reform.
I should point out here that Alice Marie Johnson is herself a bail reform advocate, having recently met with Texas Governor Bill Lee about reforming cash bail there. Those same Bronx drug dealers local media have directed public outrage toward are but younger versions of her. She undoubtedly understands how cash bail inevitably sets up two sets of legal systems: one in which people of means pay their way to pre-trial freedom and lawyers who care about their cases, and people who don’t have these means and are imprisoned from the moment of suspicion.
So, this is what you can do: Check yourself if you feel threatened by the freedom of someone accused, or even convicted, of a crime. Ask yourself why you feel threatened, what your own prejudices might be. We all have them. Maybe someone close to you is addicted to fentanyl. Maybe you or someone close to you was a victim of a violent crime. Maybe you have a friend or relative in law enforcement. (I admit, have a prejudice toward white-collar crime in the public and private sector, particularly corruption and abuse of power, probably borne of my many experiences with arrogant people who work in the top floors of tall buildings. But almost all people accused of white-collar crime at the level I’m prejudiced toward are safe from my prejudice, as they can buy their ways out of pre-trial detention and into plea deals that favor them.) Ask yourself what your prejudices might be, and how they might be influencing your fears. Talk them out with at least one person you trust, in private.
Finally, ask yourself if your fears are founded on lived experience or on something you read, watched, or listened to. Ask yourself what the prejudices of the outlets you consume are, keeping in mind that the need to keep people agitated enough to continue clicking is perhaps the most pressing prejudice of modern American media.
After you’ve done this work, go back and rewatch the Alice Marie Johnson Super Bowl ad. While watching, imagine if someone had given her the consideration at the front end of her experience with the American criminal justice system. All accounts I’ve seen of her point to a strong moral foundation and a relentless positivity in the face of a system that until recently refused to acknowledge her personhood. Then consider granting that personhood to the people who are now being granted the basic right to a fair trial that most of us take for granted. Go back and watch Lee Atwater’s Willie Horton ads. Finally, ask yourself: when I think about the faces of bail reform, do I see the Alice Marie Johnsons, or the Willie Hortons?
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