Thread by @AndrewMCrespo

real talk: The new DOJ leadership delivered a major criminal and racial justice disappointment last Friday, standing by a Trump era policy that doubles prison terms for Black men in DC. If you spent 2020 tweeting #DCStatehood and #BLM, you should be pushing to fix this *now* 🧵

Some background: In 2019 DOJ moved people charged with possessing a gun in DC from the local court system into federal court, where sentences are 2x higher. My students and I have been challenging this policy in court for over a year.

It's policies like this that fuel the racial injustice that is mass incarceration. This one applies to HUNDREDS of people, almost all of them poor and Black, and adds YEARS of prison to their lives. It is literally the opposite of progressive prosecution.

It’s also a major usurpation of DC’s authority to set its own criminal justice policies under the Home Rule Act.

But don't take my word for it. The list of thoughtful voices who have condemned this policy as racially unjust and illegal is long….

Here’s the DC Council demanding DOJ abandon the policy, which it says “disrespects the policymaking of District residents and elected officials” and “undermines the District’s work to focus on reducing racial disparities in policing and criminal justice.” perma.cc/5JDG-44DR

Here’s the District's first elected Attorney General, @AGKarlRacine, calling on DOJ to “immediately abandon this blatantly discriminatory policy."
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

Here's the DC Government formally declaring in court that the policy is racially unjust and unlawful.

Here is Harvard Law Professor @beidelson explaining in the @YaleLJournal why this specific policy is illegal under the APA (an argument we've been making in court). bit.ly/3vOHQFD

Here's the local ACLU telling the court that the policy unjustly harms Black men and is illegal.

Here's @Sifill_LDF, the Director Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund condemning the policy.

https://twitter.com/Sifill_LDF/status/1301668662747828225

Here's Yale Law School professor @jformanjr, who won a Pulitzer for his book on DC crime policy, criticizing DOJ’s move as deeply misguided and unjust two years ago when the policy was first adopted. washingtonpost.com/opinions/local…

And most amazingly, here's a WaPo article reporting that a “working group of Black AUSAs” formally banded together inside the US Attorney’s office a year ago to demand that the policy be revoked. washingtonpost.com/local/legal-is…

Jamila Hodge, who was an AUSA in the office for 12 years and now works @verainstitute, had a thoughtful thread just last week explaining how awful the policy is and calling for it to be rescinded.

https://twitter.com/hodge_jamila/status/1372715413478461440

You get the point. The overwhelming consensus among *everyone* who cares about racial and social justice in DC is that this policy MUST END, NOW.

And there was real hope, after four years living under a Trump DOJ, that it *would* end once the Biden administration took over.

That hope grew when President Biden issued an executive order declaring a "broad consensus that our current system of mass incarceration imposes significant costs and hardships on our society and communities and does not make us safer." whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…

The hope grew again when he replaced Michael Sherwin, President Trump's handpicked head of the DC US attorney's office, with Channing Phillips, who was backed by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, a champion of DC rights. washingtonpost.com/local/legal-is…

And the hope grew again last Monday, when Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is presiding over our legal challenge, ordered Phillips to declare whether the Biden administration stands by the old Trump policy.

Then came Friday.

Phillips filed a three-page brief standing by the policy. What’s worse, he suggests that DOJ IMPROVED the policy over time by BROADENING its scope, which means it can apply to even more people - of color - than it did at the outset.

So yeah. There’s a lot of folks disappointed right now. And rightly so.

I’m one of them.

This is not the change people expected. This is backing a Trump era policy that fuels mass incarceration instead of standing up for racial justice and the rights of the people DC.

So here's my new hope: My hope is that this is a mistake. That it’s some big misunderstanding or crossed wires as the new DOJ leadership continues to get confirmed by the Senate and settled into place.

That new leadership includes longtime advocates for social justice, some of whom I know and all of whom I respect. People like @VanitaGuptaCR, @KristenClarkeJD and Pam Karlan at DOJ and @chiraagbains who was recently put in charge of criminal justice policy at the White House.

I have to believe these folks and others in the new administration know that this policy is awful, and that they’d choose to listen when the DC Attorney General and so many others implore DOJ to "immediately abandon this blatantly discriminatory policy."

Even Phillips seems to have left the door cracked open to DOJ’s doing the right thing, ending his brief to Judge Sullivan with a promise that he will continue to “monitor the initiative’s impact” to “consider if further modifications are necessary.”

They are necessary, Mr. Phillips. Please, monitor the voices of the elected leaders of the people of DC, of the multiple civil rights leaders, and of your own Black AUSAs. They are all calling on you to end this policy NOW, and for good reason.

And if Mr. Phillips won’t, my hope is that those who outrank him, who agree with the message in the President’s executive order, and who share his stated commitment to racial equity will make sure the Department of Justice lives up to its name, right here in the nation's capital.

PS - That this👇🏾 hearing is happening now, days after DOJ's brief, underscores why #DCStatehood is so important. If DC were a state and @AGKarlRacine were in charge of local prosecution, this policy wouldn't exist.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1374009727135416322

@AGKarlRacine Good to see @mjs_DC on top of this. slate.com/news-and-polit…

Add Mr. @GeorgeTakei to the voices of reason urging DOJ to end this policy ASAP.

https://twitter.com/GeorgeTakei/status/1374206332375552001

And here is @Sifill_LDF, making her views clear once again, in no uncertain terms.

https://twitter.com/Sifill_LDF/status/1374211252512288769