Criminal Justice Reform
Seattle is home to diverse communities that are not served equally by our criminal justice system. We need to redirect our focus away from criminalizing poverty and address systemic injustices faced by low-income people and people of color.
End Criminalization of Poverty
- Make the failure to pay fees/fines (including Sound Transit Fees) civil infractions in the municipal code to prevent long-term consequences like loss of housing subsidies, other government benefits, or deportation
- End Cash Bail which discriminates against low-income and minority defendants
- Fund public defenders to fill the gap between King County and the Supreme-Court mandated-minimum
No Youth Detention
- Incarcerating youth is not a developmentally appropriate or humane approach
- Work with community groups to repurpose the new youth jail for non-carceral uses
- Work with Seattle Police Department and community resource officers to reduce arrest and detention of youth
- Invest new resources in health and wellness programs for at-risk youth
Justice for All
- Establish a taskforce to address crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women
- Cooperate with the state and county to improve rape kit processing
- Provide expanded legal support to immigrants facing deportation and labor and civil rights violations
Police Reform
- Expand Seattle’s nationally-renowned the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) Program to reduce criminal recidivism of low-level offenders
- End broken windows policing
- Explore new community policing initiatives, including hiring more officers from underserved communities
- Increase number of non-police community resource officers and victim advocates to support victims of domestic violence and abuse