Thank you so much for your questions - I’ll leave you with some words of wisdom, courtesy of my father, from my new book  "Robert F. Kennedy: Ripples of Hope". The influence of my father's legacy is remembered through conversations  by Dolores Huerta, Barack Obama, Van Jones, Al Gore and more!

His moral imagination animated all he did. It enabled him to understand thatKhrushchev, like JFK, had a military industrial complex pushing the Soviets towar, but that there was a way to peace, thus saving us from nuclearannihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis. That same empathy allowed him tospeak with compassion and heart to an audience in the  largest African American neighborhood  the night Dr. King died.   We need that moral leadership today.

While these efforts are literally life changing for individuals, and provide powerful opportunities for story-telling and narrative change, it’s important to remember that posting bail is only a stop gap measure – ending money bail is the larger goal, and that can only be done through legal change.

Though it varies in severity, funding for public defenders is a huge issue across the country. Even in New York where we have one of the most robustly funded public defense community, the resources are far from sufficient. One of the organizations doing the best work around resources and training for public defenders – particularly in the South where funding is significantly in peril – is Gideon’s Promise. In every state and city however, citizens must raise their voices for this important issue in their state legislature’s and city council’s budget process.

You raise a good point that gets to one of the biggest challenges that reform efforts confront – in that we are not just addressing a handful of individual’s racist views or policies, but rather entire structures that have been set up and our founded upon injustice and inequity. This is structural racism and inequality, and when it is embedded in our systems it can mask the reality of what is going on.

Again, we should be very careful to use someone’scharges as a proxy to determine whether we should deprive them of their libertybefore they have even been convicted of any crime. Ideally, each case wouldreceive an individualized determination of whether there is a legitimate reasonto incarcerate someone pretrial – again ensuring that there is no lessrestrictive measure to accomplish the same outcome and ensuring thatdetermination is made with due process. Last year, Robert F. Kennedy HumanRights took on the case of Pedro Hernandez in the Bronx. Pedro is a teenagerand a victim of police abuse and was caged in Rikers for over a year on falsecharges of shooting a gun into a crowd. The same goes for Kalief Browder whotragically took his life after being caged on Rikers even longer than Pedro onsimilar false charges.

The advocates in New Jersey deserve a lot of credit at being at the forefront of positive reform efforts. However we should all be cautious of treating algorithmic risk assessments as a panacea for reform. Racial and economic inequality are currently embedded in our criminal legal system. As most risk assessment instruments out there use data about a person’s history in the system – a system that we all acknowledge have disproportionately targeted communities of color and the poor – then that data is further embedding the inequities of the past system in place to make determinations in the reformed system. While in some areas, for example rural areas where resources and lawyers and court staff are in short supply, some form of a risk assessment might indeed be a helpful tool to decarcerate, we have to question as reformers whether, on principle, we are willing to settle for a reform that still has racism and economic inequality embedded in it. For a great resource on risk assessments, check out this Q&A document by Human Rights. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=IS5mwymTIJU

Angela Davis is an incredible leader, thinker, and activist – the importance of her voice in this moment cannot be overstated. Everyone should go read more about Critical Resistance, but her vision of creating “genuinely healthy, stable communities that respond to harm without relying on imprisonment and punishment” is something we should all be working towards. Abolitionism should not be a term we relegate to history, especially when we have a system of mass human caging that is a direct legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.  

As a big, complicated state, the bail reformdynamics in CA are complex and evolving. Your best bet is to follow the lead ofsome of the amazing grassroots orgs who are closest to the ground in Californiaand working with directly impacted communities, such as Essie JusticeGroup, Silicon Valley DeBug, and Color ofChange.

I had personally joined the public calls for Alice to receive clemency. It was the right thing to do. Groups like the National Council and Can Do Clemency are doing a lot on this issue writ large. At the same time many, many, many more people currently serving unjust sentences deserve clemency, we must recognize that not everyone will have a celebrity champion their cause. Unfortunately we now have President who only seems to do the right thing when it serves his ego. So that’s not a sustainable formula we can rely on for clemency efforts moving forward. More needs to be done at the state level by governors as well. And in general, we cannot take our eye off the ball of reform efforts that will prevent more people from being caged en masse and winding up in need of clemency years from now.

Female voices are essential if we’re serious about reforming our broken criminal justice system. That’s one of the reasons Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights honored Andrea James with our 2016 Human Rights Award who founded the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls , and why we’ve worked to amplify the stories of mothers like Jessica Perez, whose son Pedro Hernandez spent over a year in Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime. We would also point you to our partners at the Essie Justice Project who are doing amazing work in California with and for women with incarcerated loved ones. These stories, issues, and perspectives specific to women deserve far greater visibility and room at the table when discussing criminal justice reform.

●    And never underestimate the powerof just starting a conversation – especially if it’s with people who mightdisagree with you, or might not be aware of these issues. Have friends over towatch The Thirteenth on Netflix, then talk about what you see and find a way toget involved together.

First it’s great to hear that you are collecting data, because there is a huge gap in data collection which is so crucial to making informed reform decisions. Your question also raises important issues that need to be discussed in bail reform efforts. In fact a charge-based decision making process is an inherently flawed way of thinking about who should get released pretrial and who should be detained – let alone who should have conditions set (like money bail) to secure their release. In all cases, pretrial people are innocent until proven guilty. What about innocent people accused of a serious crimes? What about people accused of “petty” crimes who prosecutors then “over-charge” with a “serious” crime to increase the likelihood they are detained and can thus much more easily (though unjustly and coercively) extract a guilty plea? True bail reform requires us to examine preconceived notions of the way the system has operated for years. Any decision to take away someone’s liberty should involve due process. In terms of public safety, if there is evidence that someone represents a threat to a specific individual, that’s a legitimate consideration. If there is evidence that someone will flee the jurisdiction to avoid prosecution, that’s a legitimate consideration. If there is evidence that someone is tampering with witnesses while out to obstruct justice in their case, that’s a legitimate consideration. But to use an imperfect “proxy” like “charge” to take away someone’s liberty before they’ve been convicted with due process by a court of law – that is a dangerous proposition that will continue to result in the unjust over-incarceration of people pretrial across the country.

There are a whole host of plausible reforms. There are diversion programs and other policing reforms that can reduce the number of people going into the system in the first place. There are office policies and everyday decisions by prosecutors to stop requesting money bail and instead request non-monetary conditions of release (if any condition at all) in each case that comes across their desk (see Kim Foxx in Chicago, and Larry Krasner in Philadelphia). There are legislative reforms, like that we are working on with our partners here in New York at JustLeadershipUSA that can decrease those who are even eligible for pretrial detention and/or ensure that one’s ability to pay is taken into account.

In fact, that is exactly what many reformers are specifically demanding: in every single case where money bail is set as a condition of release, there MUST be a determination (with due process) of the person’s “ability to pay”. But going beyond that, there are many other less restrictive conditions of release that don’t involve putting money down upfront and don’t rely upon the coercive private bail bonds industry (like “unsecured bonds” here in New York).