Nikki Trautman Baszynski

The Point Clemency is a powerful tool for correcting the injustices of the criminal legal system. Governors who have this power should use it to immediately send thousands of people home from prison to their families and communities.  Governors must use clemency to address mass criminalization and its harms: Governors should use categorical clemency, which […]

Barriers to employment, housing, and basic necessities make stability difficult, if not entirely out of reach, for individuals returning to their community after prison. States can improve public safety and increase postrelease success by providing a temporary guaranteed income to people exiting prison. 

Manhattan’s next district attorney should consider less punitive alternatives instead.

Larry Krasner’s clear win in the Philadelphia District Attorney primary election should have been a wake-up call to journalists who spent weeks breathlessly painting the race as a referendum on progressive prosecutors and their decarceral policies. Instead, they doubled down, redirecting their fearmongering to other cities. This reckless reporting needs to stop. 

Arrest, prosecution, and incarceration have long been wielded against sex workers, with Black, brown, and LGBTQ sex workers disproportionately bearing the brunt of this abuse. Manhattan’s next district attorney must stop prosecuting offenses relating to sex work in order to scale back this system of harm.

The filing of an eviction—even without merit—can prevent someone from renting a future home, ruin a person’s credit, and even hurt employment and insurance prospects. It is time for government officials to put protections in place to prevent the long-term damage that eviction records cause.

Since District Attorney Larry Krasner took office, Philadelphia has seen a significant drop in drug prosecutions, focusing attention instead on treatment and evidence-based practices. Whoever wins the Democratic primary must continue down this corrective path.  

One-third of Connecticut’s residents are renters, leaving them vulnerable to eviction and its devastating consequences. Lawmakers can help renters remain in their homes by passing the statewide renters’ right-to-counsel bill.    

On May 18, Philadelphia will choose a Democratic nominee for this year’s district attorney race. While incumbent District Attorney Larry Krasner has taken steps to reduce Philadelphia’s probation and parole population, whoever wins the primary must do more work to address Philadelphia’s mass supervision problem.

Last year, thousands of incarcerated people were returned to their families and communities in order to reduce the spread of the coronavirus in federal prisons. The Biden administration should reverse the last-minute Trump administration policy that would send them back.

Some states still allow judges to sentence children and adolescents to die in prison. Maryland just became the 25th state to abolish juvenile life-without-parole sentences—the other 25 should follow suit. 

With the passage of HB18 on April 12, 2021, Maryland is positioned to become the first state to provide its renters with attorneys during eviction proceedings. Governor Larry Hogan should sign this bill to help keep people housed, employed, and safe.

A growing number of Americans oppose the death penalty, but prosecutors—even some who call themselves “progressive”—continue to seek it. All prosecutors should stop pursuing and protecting capital convictions.  

Prisons and jails routinely use prolonged solitary confinement—holding someone in a cell for more than 22 hours a day with no meaningful human contact. New York just passed the HALT Act to limit this inhumane practice, and others states should do the same. 

“Technical violations” of probation or parole are by definition minor—forgetting to update your address, showing up to a meeting late, or missing a curfew—but often get people locked up. State lawmakers should ban incarceration for technical violations of probation and parole.

Legal representation during an eviction hearing significantly improves a person’s chances of remaining in their home. Among other ways, cities can use the funding from federal pandemic relief bills to ensure their residents have this critical legal representation. 

Last year, the Utah legislature passed a bill to help decrease the number of people incarcerated simply because they are too poor to buy their freedom. This month, the legislature passed a bill that would repeal the 2020 law. Governor Spencer Cox can save bail reform with a veto.

President Biden’s decisions about who to nominate as federal prosecutors must reflect his campaign commitment to criminal justice reform—and the changed national focus on progressive prosecution. A broad group of organizations released a letter on Wednesday calling on Biden to do just that. 

Cities can keep people housed, employed, and healthy by giving them lawyers to help guide them through eviction proceedings.  

In the Trump administration, criminal justice data was hidden, manipulated, and politicized. If President Biden wants to enact meaningful criminal justice reform, he must fix—and fully fund—the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

A key part of public safety is making sure the right people respond to the right needs. St. Louis’s next mayor can ensure that trained civilian responders, instead of armed police officers, respond to mental health and substance use crises. 

Biden wants to end the death penalty. His first and most important step must be commuting the sentence of every person on federal death row. 

Jails across the country are nearing or exceeding pre-pandemic incarceration levels. Government officials—especially judges, sheriffs, and prosecutors—must work quickly to release people inside jails and divert those who are still being booked into them.

The Point: There are thousands of people locked inside federal prisons who don’t need to be there. Through clemency, a singular power and responsibility that the Constitution entrusts to the president, President Biden can return people back to their communities and homes.  Biden can and should prioritize the clemency power to release people from federal […]