The criminal legal system is harshest by design to those who are the most economically disenfranchised. From the criminalization of poverty via Jim Crow era vagrancy laws, the arrests of sex workers and low level drug offenders, to the bail system that forces people with no conviction to sit in jail, the legal system pushes families deeper into poverty and puts children into the custody of the state.
That’s why we demand: the decriminalization of sex work, homelessness, and low level drug offenses, the substantial and sustained reduction of pre-trial detention instead replacing it with direct services for those in need of them, and an end to the cash bail system.