There's growing bipartisan consensus that our current criminal justice system is broken -- we're misusing criminalization and incarceration to solve social problems, leading to a disaster for communities, especially communities of color.
But advocates say the case highlights a larger problem within the American criminal justice system: the prevalence of a widespread body of HIV criminalization laws, which use medically outdated criminal law to stigmatize people living with the virus.
"By increasing the use of civil adjudication instead of relying on our broken criminal summons system, we can reduce the long-term consequences of over-criminalization while ensuring that the penalties fit the offense and that police have the tools they need to keep us safe".
Two decades later, this 1996 act has wreaked havoc on our immigrant communities - setting in motion the mass criminalization of our immigration system, as unprecedented waves of violence and displacement in Central America and the Middle East have revealed how broken our system truly is.
IIRIRA has also effectively put in motion the mass criminalization of our immigration system - using mandatory detention for immigrants, expanding the uses of non-mandatory detention, imposing harsh immigration penalties for small criminal violations, and stripping adjudicators and federal courts of the discretion or jurisdiction to hear challenges to immigration decisions.
"This example, one of many across our state, underscores the true promise of Proposition 64 ― providing new hope and opportunities to Californians, primarily people of color, whose lives were long ago derailed by a costly, broken and racially discriminatory system of marijuana criminalization," Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement.
Due to widespread stigma and cultural incompetency within the health-care system, fueled by criminalization of sex work, and the fact that even many providers don't know what PrEP is or how to prescribe it, this potential miracle drug is not reaching the people who may need it most.
Even in the tweediest precincts of the legal system, the over-criminalization of American life is remarked upon with greater frequency and intensity.
The criminalization of politics undermines our very system".
Trudeau has previously said pot prohibition has resulted in 475,000 people with criminal records since the Conservatives came into power in 2006, and criminalization of the drug costs the justice system $500 million a year.
