In December, the North Carolina Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice delivered recommendations to Gov. Roy Cooper to make the criminal justice system and law enforcement system fairer to Black people and communities of color. Now, we are in the next phase of our work – turning these recommendations into reality to make North Carolina safer for every person.

The Task Force was led by Attorney General Josh Stein and Justice Anita Earls and included North Carolinians with a range of experiences with the systems that shape, and so often have failed, our communities. Our 125 recommendations span a breadth of criminal justice issues – some well-known, some not – that call for real, meaningful change to address racial inequities.

The initial work was driven by the events of summer 2020, which saw a nationwide refocusing on the deep pain that Black people feel after centuries of oppression, often at the hands of our own government systems, and a recommitment by Black people and our allies to create a more just world. But these recommendations continue to gain urgency because we’ve repeatedly seen the hatred and ignorance born of white supremacy devastate communities of color everywhere. We have seen this harm in the implementation of racist and dehumanizing immigration policies, in the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, in the continued rise in hate crimes, and in the Atlanta shootings of eight people, six of whom were Asian American women (which should remind us to consider how racist violence and gendered violence intersect).

As members of the legal profession, we must think critically about our role in perpetuating racial disparities and confront our own biases and the biases in the systems in which we participate. We come at these issues from different perspectives – prosecutors, defense attorneys, civil rights advocates, local and state government advisors, and private attorneys. But we are firstly members of our own communities, and it’s on us to eliminate the inequities that harm and kill people of color in our communities.

Task Force members know that the criminal justice system is just one aspect of the work that needs to be done, but the assigned task was to focus there. Our solutions fall into two categories: improving law enforcement and improving the courts. Among our recommendations to improve the law enforcement system, we discuss the need to re-evaluate and reimagine public safety and the role of law enforcement, reinvest in communities and build trust, eliminate racial inequities in investigations and arrests, provide alternatives to arrest, minimize and regulate the use of force, and increase transparency and accountability among law enforcement.

The second set of recommendations outline the changes that our court system desperately needs. Eliminating racial disparities requires reimagining our public safety system and revisiting commonly accepted definitions of justice, including through racial equity training. We must act to help make victims whole, prevent future crime, and create safer communities. That means improving the juvenile justice system (especially changing a system that would put a six-year old on trial for stealing a flower), revisiting the criminal code to decriminalize poverty, illness, and mental health, and eliminating the stark imbalances in charging outcomes for Black people and other people of color.

We also need to reform our pretrial practices to make sure people aren’t detained pretrial solely because they lack financial resources. And while many have worked hard to move North Carolina’s reentry efforts forward, we have much more to do to support people leaving prison or jail as they navigate the additional burdens of fees and fines and the challenges of getting a job, finding housing, and building stable lives.

The work ahead of the Task Force to implement these recommended solutions is immense. But we must put everything we can into these efforts. These are issues of life and death for too many people of color who have faced the real harm of white supremacy and racial hatred, often inside and outside our justice system. This is true for people accused of crimes, victims of crime, and the communities left behind. This moment doesn’t just ask for our participation as lawyers and legal professionals – it demands it. Real, meaningful change is possible, and we can create a more equitable and just society if we work alongside each other in our profession and in our communities.

You can read the Task Force’s report here and review an executive summary of the report here.

Jasmine McGhee is a Special Deputy Attorney General at the North Carolina Department of Justice and the director of the Department’s Public Protection Section. She also serves as Co-Lead Counsel for the North Carolina Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice.

March 26, 2021/by CriminalJustice