Support justice-driven, accurate and transparent news — make a quick donation to Truthout today!
Decrying America’s status as the “world’s leading jailer,” Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday released a comprehensive plan to confront the crisis of mass incarceration, end the criminalization of poverty and dramatically overhaul the U.S. criminal legal system.
“We have a criminal justice system that is racist and broken, and working together we’re going to fundamentally transform it,” said Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.
The platform, which Sanders is expected to unveil at an event in Columbia, South Carolina, on Sunday, condemns America’s “overly-punitive approach to public safety” and urges investments “to rebuild the communities that mass incarceration continues to decimate.”
Specifically, Sanders’ platform—detailed on his website—calls for:
- A ban on private prisons as part of a broader effort to “end profiteering in our criminal justice system”;
- An end to cash bail, which traps poor Americans in a cycle of debt;
- Transformation of policing by ensuring oversight and accountability for law enforcement, banning use facial recognition software by law enforcement, and ending “programs that provide military equipment to local police”;
- Abolishing the death penalty;
- Legalization of marijuana and erasure of past marijuana convictions; and
- An end to the criminalization of addiction by funding adequate treatment for those addicted to opioids.
“If we stand together, we can eliminate private prisons and detention centers. No more profiteering from locking people up,” Sanders plans to say during his speech in South Carolina.
“If we stand together we can end the disastrous ‘war on drugs,'” according to an excerpt released by his presidential campaign. “If we stand together we can end cash bail. No more keeping people in jail because they’re too poor. If we stand together we can enact real police department reform and prosecute police brutality. If we stand together, there is nothing, nothing, nothing that we cannot accomplish.”
Watch the speech, which is scheduled to begin at 2 pm ET:
Matching Opportunity Extended: Please support Truthout today!
Our end-of-year fundraiser is over, but our donation matching opportunity has been extended! All donations to Truthout will be matched dollar for dollar for a limited time.
Your one-time gift today will be matched immediately. Your monthly donation will be matched for the whole first year, doubling your impact.
This matching gift comes at a critical time. As Trump attempts to silence dissenting voices and oppositional nonprofits, reader support is our best defense against the right-wing agenda.
Help Truthout confront Trump’s fascism in 2026, and have your donation matched now!