Contact your representative
In recent years, a bipartisan group of elected officials led by Virgina Senator Jim Web has proposed “The National Criminal Justice Commission Act.” The bill that would establish a blue-ribbon commission to study and propose solutions to the nation’s broken criminal justice system.
Contact your elected officials in the House and Senate, and urge them to support the bill and call for the legislation to include a thorough review of how our criminal justice system handles domestic violence cases in particular. Domestic violence evidence has been overlooked in thousands of cases; reopening these cases and improving the handling of future domestic violence cases are tangible ways to safely reduce US prison populations.
When writing your representative, please feel free to copy and paste the following text into your message, or write your own as you see fit:
Dear Representative,
I urge you to support The National Criminal Justice Commission Act, a bill that would establish a blue-ribbon commission to study and propose solutions to the nation’s broken criminal justice system. Among other things, this commission should be tasked with closely examining the circumstances that have led to the incarceration of many survivors of domestic violence. For the most part, these inmates are women with no prior criminal record who only fought back against an abuser after enduring years of domestic violence.
We currently spend far too much money every year keeping people in prison, and much of that money has no positive impact in terms of public safety. The release of incarcerated survivor of domestic violence represents a tangible way to restore justice and reduce government spending.
Sincerely,