We are organizations concerned in reducing the damage and footprint of incarceration and criminalization in Pennsylvania.
The subsequent governor of Pennsylvania will oversee an office environment that has broad powers around the Commonwealth’s felony authorized procedure. He or she will have considerable affect in excess of Pennsylvania’s spending plan and legislation, together with a veto electric power, and could grant clemency to people today who are not a danger to public basic safety, or who really should normally not be in prison.
Our existing governor, Tom Wolf, has taken a amount of actions to lower the damage of the incarceration complicated on Pennsylvanians, which include a moratorium on the loss of life penalty.
Wolf, a Democrat, will leave office environment in 2022 immediately after serving the constitutional maximum of two, four-calendar year terms.
Whoever succeeds Wolf need to grow on these measures, and must not hesitate to indication onto legislation that addresses and reduces hurt brought about by outdated and extremely punitive legal legislation.
Pennsylvania’s upcoming governor will have to present leadership on issues that influence thousands and thousands of us, which include some 96,000 people today in federal, point out, county, and juvenile custody who are incarcerated in Pennsylvania proper now.
All those problems include:
- Ending the demise penalty.
- Ending required minimums.
- Ending the follow of charging demise by drug shipping and delivery.
- Ending life without the need of parole.
- Ending solitary confinement.
- Decriminalizing material use, poverty, and psychological ailment.
- Reallocating assets to community wellbeing infrastructure such as unexpected emergency health care responders and violence interrupters.
- Raising transparency and accountability in legislation enforcement.
- Creating ideal state funding for efficient indigent protection throughout the Commonwealth.
- Supporting harm reduction facilities that protect against drug overdose deaths.
- Applying the enormous electricity of clemency to cut down harsh sentences so that people who are not a menace to public security are released.
These challenges are interconnected and core to the above-incarceration of disproportionately Black and brown communities, and will need to be tackled by the following governor of Pennsylvania.
This letter was jointly prepared by:
Abolitionist Regulation Heart
ACLU of Pennsylvania
Amistad Regulation Venture
Atlantic Middle for Capital Representation
Artwork for Justice
Black Development PAC
Cheltenham NAACP
Chinese for People
Coalition to Abolish Loss of life by Incarceration
Community Hero Action Group
Delaware County Office of the Community Defender
Gardening for Change
Homeless Advocacy Challenge
Jules Epstein, Professor of Law at Temple School of Regulation Juvenile Legislation Centre
Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, Feinberg & Lin LLP
Law Workplaces of M.J. Snyder, LLC
Montgomery County Participatory Defense
Norristown NAACP
PA for Possibilities to the Death Penalty
Pennsylvania Ladies Increase
Pennsylvania Stands Up
Pottstown NAACP
PowerUp PAC
Progressive Montco
Public Defender Association of Pennsylvania
Reuniting Loved ones Bail Fund
Straight Ahead
The Isaiah Project
Youth Sentencing & Reentry Undertaking
Movement for Black and Brown Lives in Montgomery County