Pres. Clinton or Pres. Trump: Easy Choice

As of today, Americans will have to choose between Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump as our next president. If your goal is criminal justice reform, the choice is easy. Democrat President Obama has made criminal justice reform one of his priorities. He launched new policies to reduce the number of inmates and to help the more than 600,000 inmates released annually to become “productive, contributing members of their families and communities.”

The Democrats have called for reform of a justice system that has the most inmates and prisons in the world. Hillary Clinton, in her April 2015 speech on criminal justice reform, listed five points which included ending our era of mass incarceration by finding, “alternative punishments for low-level offenders.”She has called for “Ban the Box” from job applications.

This important change, “Ban the Box,” would allow an individual with a criminal record an opportunity for a job interview. One of the major contributing causes of our high recidivism rate is the lack of jobs for released inmates. In 2015, the Manhattan Institute released a study showing that immediate employment for released inmates reduces recidivism.

Let us examine closely the plans of the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, on criminal justice reform. There are no plans. Trump has not issued any recommendations for the reform of our broken system of justice.

If your goal is reform of our criminal justice system, the choice in November is quite easy!

By: Bradley Schwartz
Founder of prisonpath.com