Last week, we looked at the hidden architecture protecting injustice. This week, we’ll reimagine the roles of police and prosecutors and build a justice system worthy of democracy.
Rethinking Policing: Design, Not Defect
Policing in America is not universally dysfunctional, it is selectively effective. Police are exceptionally good at protecting property, enforcing order against the poor, and safeguarding the privileges of those with wealth and political power. What they are not designed to do is universally protect all members of the public. This is not simply a failure of training or a few “bad apples.” It is the logical outcome of the institution’s origins: from slave patrols in the antebellum South to strikebreakers during the labor wars of the early 20th century, policing in the United States has long been a tool for enforcing social hierarchies. The modern disparities in how police treat different communities are not a glitch in the system, they are the system working as intended.
To fundamentally transform policing, we must reimagine its role entirely. First, police should be removed from areas where armed intervention does more harm than good: schools, traffic enforcement, and mental health crises. Evidence shows that police presence in schools increases suspensions, arrests, and dropout rates, particularly for Black and disabled students. Similarly, routine traffic stops have led to unnecessary escalations, violence, and deaths, as in the killing of Philando Castile during a stop for a broken taillight. Mental health crises, meanwhile, are far more effectively addressed by trained crisis responders, not officers with guns. Cities like Denver, with its STAR program, have already demonstrated that replacing police with unarmed professionals in these contexts dramatically reduces arrests and avoids deadly encounters.
Second, we must invest in alternative first responders, social workers, crisis teams, and unarmed civil mediators, who can handle disputes, emergencies, and community concerns without the risk of lethal force. These alternatives are not theoretical. Eugene, Oregon’s CAHOOTS program has been doing this for over 30 years, responding to thousands of calls annually with no weapons and almost no need for police backup. Scaling such models nationally would free police to focus on the narrow set of tasks where armed intervention might actually be necessary, while ensuring that most emergencies are handled by those best equipped to de-escalate them.
Ultimately, reform is not enough; abolition and rebuilding must be on the table. Abolishing policing as we know it means dismantling the current institution and creating new systems of community safety from the ground up, guided by community governance and participatory budgeting. In this model, neighborhoods decide what safety looks like for them, and resources are allocated toward prevention, through housing, health care, education, and restorative justice, rather than punishment. The aim is not to leave communities unprotected, but to replace an outdated, punitive structure with one that actually serves the people it claims to protect.
Accountability must also be a central pillar of transformation. Civilian oversight boards with real investigative and disciplinary power, not the toothless advisory committees most cities have now, are essential. Mandatory body cameras, with strict penalties for disabling or failing to use them, can provide transparency, but only if footage is made accessible to the public. And prosecutorial independence from law enforcement is critical to ensure that misconduct by police is treated like any other crime. Without these measures, “accountability” will remain a buzzword, and the cycle of abuse will continue.
The Incentive to Punish
Prosecutors hold immense discretionary power: power that can shape, or shatter, a person’s life. They decide whether to bring charges, what those charges will be, and whether to offer a plea deal. In practice, the overwhelming majority of criminal cases in the United States never go to trial. They are resolved through plea bargaining, a process in which prosecutors act as judge, jury, and executioner all at once. The imbalance is staggering: prosecutors can threaten defendants with far harsher sentences if they insist on exercising their right to a trial, making “voluntary” pleas anything but. This is not a marginal quirk of the system; it is the system, built for efficiency and control rather than justice.
To restore balance, we must elect progressive prosecutors who are committed to decarceration, ending the death penalty, and refusing to seek charges that criminalize poverty, addiction, or mental illness. The recent wave of reform-minded district attorneys in cities like Philadelphia, San Francisco, and St. Louis has shown that prosecutorial discretion can be used to shrink the carceral footprint rather than expand it. Larry Krasner’s decision to stop seeking cash bail for low-level offenses in Philadelphia, for example, reduced jail populations without any corresponding increase in crime. But these changes require political will, and that starts at the ballot box.
We must also ban plea deal coercion through mandatory judicial oversight. Judges should be required to review plea agreements in open court, verify that they are not the product of threats or excessive sentence disparities, and ensure that defendants understand the consequences. Historically, unchecked plea bargaining has led to travesties of justice: the “Central Park Five” were coerced into false confessions in part because of the immense pressure to accept prosecutorial narratives. Mandatory oversight would put a check on this quiet but powerful tool of coercion.
Independent oversight boards must be created to investigate prosecutorial misconduct, particularly in cases where evidence is suppressed, witnesses are coerced, or wrongful convictions occur. The history of wrongful convictions in America, from the death row exonerations documented by the Innocence Project to the collapse of high-profile cases like the Duke lacrosse prosecution, shows that when prosecutors break the rules, the consequences are catastrophic. Yet discipline is rare, and disbarment even rarer. An independent body with the authority to investigate, sanction, and remove prosecutors would bring a measure of accountability to an office that often operates without any.
And we must separate prosecution from police. A truly just system cannot allow those who work hand-in-hand with law enforcement to also be the ones tasked with holding it accountable. The conflict of interest is obvious: prosecutors rely on police for evidence and testimony, so they are often reluctant to investigate or charge officers, even in cases of egregious misconduct. Independent prosecutorial units for cases involving police wrongdoing, similar to New York’s Office of Special Investigation for police killings, should be standard nationwide. Only then can we begin to dismantle the culture of mutual protection that shields law enforcement from justice.
Building an Equitable Legal Infrastructure
Transforming justice means more than removing the most harmful elements of our current system, it means constructing an entirely new infrastructure rooted in equity and access. For too long, reforms have focused on damage control after harm has already occurred, patching holes in a sinking ship instead of designing something seaworthy. A truly just system is proactive, preventing harm before it happens and ensuring that everyone, not just the wealthy or well-connected, can navigate the law on equal footing.
Universal public defenders, with adequate funding and strict caseload limits, are the foundation of such a system. The Sixth Amendment promises the right to counsel, but in practice, public defenders in many jurisdictions are so overworked that they cannot provide meaningful representation. In New Orleans, some defenders have handled over 200 felony cases at once, an impossible burden that guarantees mistakes. History shows the cost of this neglect: underfunded defense systems have been a driving force behind wrongful convictions, coerced pleas, and lengthy pretrial detentions. Adequate funding and manageable caseloads would make the constitutional promise real, not rhetorical.
Community courts and restorative justice models should replace much of the current adversarial process, focusing on repair rather than retribution. Restorative justice, where victims, offenders, and community members collaboratively address the harm caused, has deep roots in Indigenous legal traditions and has been shown to reduce recidivism while increasing victim satisfaction. In places like Oakland, California, restorative justice programs for youth have cut suspension and arrest rates in participating schools by more than half. These approaches recognize that accountability does not require cages and that safety comes from repairing relationships, not destroying them.
State-level innocence commissions must be empowered to review and overturn wrongful convictions. North Carolina’s commission, the first of its kind in the nation, has exonerated dozens of people since its creation, uncovering patterns of prosecutorial misconduct, faulty forensic evidence, and coerced confessions. Expanding such commissions nationwide would provide a safety net for those failed by every other part of the system. And unlike ad hoc appeals, these commissions can investigate systemic flaws, not just individual cases, helping to prevent future miscarriages of justice.
Finally, we must create legal empowerment centers that help individuals navigate both civil and criminal processes without relying solely on expensive private counsel. Many Americans face life-altering legal challenges: evictions, custody disputes, wage theft, without any access to affordable legal help. The result is a two-tier system: one for those who can afford attorneys and another for those who cannot. Legal empowerment centers, staffed by trained advocates and community legal navigators, would give people the tools to understand their rights, complete necessary paperwork, and represent themselves effectively when needed.
Justice must be more than a reactive remedy, it must be a tool to prevent harm. By investing in defenders, restorative practices, wrongful conviction safeguards, and accessible legal resources, we can replace a punitive system designed to punish with a preventative system designed to protect. This is the difference between patching a broken structure and building one meant to last.
Democracy, Courts, and the Rule of Law
If democracy means anything, it must mean that no institution is above the people, not the Supreme Court, not prosecutors, not police. Yet our legal system has drifted far from that principle, becoming increasingly insulated from public accountability. Judicial review, originally conceived as a check against legislative overreach, has morphed into judicial supremacy, where nine unelected justices can overrule the will of hundreds of millions. Law enforcement, sworn to uphold the law, has too often operated as if it is above it. And the people most harmed by these institutions: Black and brown communities, the poor, immigrants, the incarcerated, are the ones with the least power to change them.
History offers repeated warnings about what happens when legal institutions operate without democratic control. In the late 19th century, the Supreme Court’s Lochner era struck down laws protecting workers on the grounds of “freedom of contract,” blocking progressive reforms for decades. During the civil rights movement, many Southern sheriffs and prosecutors openly defied federal law, using their unchecked discretion to maintain segregation. In each case, institutions shielded from democratic accountability entrenched injustice instead of dismantling it.
That must end. We must reintegrate our legal system into a democratic framework that makes every part of it answerable to the people it serves. Congress must use its constitutional authority to regulate the courts, through measures like jurisdiction stripping, ethics rules, and term limits, to ensure that the judiciary does not operate as a self-governing elite. State legislatures must hold prosecutors and police accountable to local communities by establishing independent oversight bodies with the power to investigate, discipline, and remove those who abuse their authority. And cities and counties must democratize public safety, allowing communities to decide how resources are spent, whether on traditional law enforcement or on alternatives like violence prevention programs and restorative justice.
Finally, we must recognize that the fight for legal transformation is inseparable from the broader movement for democratic renewal. The same forces that have eroded voting rights, gerrymandered representation, and concentrated wealth in the hands of the few have also insulated the justice system from accountability. Restoring democracy means restoring control over the institutions that enforce, and too often, warp, the law. The legal system should be a living extension of the people’s will, not a fortress standing against it.
Rebuilding the System
Policing, justice, and rehabilitation in America is broken. So broken, in fact, that the rules we designed the system around are now actively harming the outcomes we want from our justice system.
It’s imperative that we replace these systems with well thought out policy that naturally incentivizes and enshrines common human decency and civil liberties.
Our communities are important, and if we want people to be actively engaged in their communities, then policy steps need to be taken to enable and encourage such behavior. It is not enough to just tell the community that they ought to organize themselves, but we must also take steps to enable communities to develop.
For the single mother, struggling with two jobs, but who wants to improve the school district.
For the overburdened student, who feels disconnected from his community because of his busy schedule.
For the elderly couple, who want to help those around them, but who struggle with chronic illness.
These people are not able to build communities, because community access has been stripped from them through policy. Economic insecurity, academic pressure, chronic health issues, these are all problems cause in whole or in part by public policy, and instead of demanding that these individuals create a community despite their pressures, it ought to be the role of the government to remove these pressures to allow the creation of communities.
The same applies to our proposed regulations of the justice system. It is not enough to demand oversight, we must also pursue policies that incentivize and enable equality, truth, and justice in our legal system.
If you’ve made it this far, you’re clearly someone who values thoughtful critique over surface-level noise.
Join me every Sunday as we dig into the deeper systems behind the chaos, law, politics, power, and how we rebuild what’s broken.
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