What 2,392 Incarcerated People Think About #DefundThePolice
How do we fix policing in America? Can it be fixed? Donald Trump has made “law and order” a central message of his campaign, portraying anti–police brutality protesters as dangerous. Joe Biden has emphatically rejected protesters’ calls to defund the police and insists that less drastic reform can make a difference.
Whoever wins the election will help shape the future of criminal justice. But while the effects of the pandemic and police violence are magnified for people behind bars, the vast majority of them will not be able to press for solutions by voting. So The Marshall Project and Slate asked them directly what they thought.
In March, we launched a first-of-its-kind political survey of people behind bars, reasoning that while they are constantly talked about on the campaign trail, their own views are rarely sought. The survey showed that despite being temporarily barred from the political process, many people in prison remain politically engaged—and had some surprising political preferences.
In this second survey, incarcerated people showed they have passionate and nuanced opinions about what interventions might have kept them out of prison and what
