Gabbard pledges she would end the war on drugs.

Gabbard pledges to end cash bail.

Gabbard introduced the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2019, which would limit the application of Federal laws to the distribution and consumption of marijuana and would remove marijuana from the list of Schedule l substances under the Controlled Substances Act.

Gabbard would remove marijuana-related convictions from “otherwise law-abiding Americans.”

Gabbard received increased national attention after criticizing Senator Kamala Harris for her record as former Attorney General for California stating, “... and the people who suffered under your reign as California prosecutor -- you owe them an apology.”

Gabbard would pass the End Money Bail Act, and would provide resources to states to implement a free trial, no money bail system.

Gabbard has pledged to provide resources to states to reduce the jail population, ensure safer communities, and save taxpayer dollars.

Gabbard promises to shut down the school-to-prison pipeline.

Gabbard pledges she will work for clemency reform, including expunging the criminal records of individuals convicted of non-violent drug offenses.

Gabbard says she will work to make house arrest and work release “more viable for non-violent offenders” with the aim to prevent jail and prison entry.

O'Rourke proposes to end prohibition of marijuana and expunge arrest records of those incarcerated for possessing it, end cash bail, end mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent offenses, eliminate private and for-profit prisons, ensure the formerly incarcerated have a path to reenter our communities.

Yang would work to end the use of private prison facilities for federal inmates.

Yang promises to shift drug policy away from punishment and towards treatment.

Yang would push to reconsider harsh felony laws that prevent those who have served their prison term from reintegrating into society.

Yang would implement Universal Basic Income which will dramatically decrease incentives for criminality and improve the functioning of individuals and communities

Yang would work to implement a federal program of pre-trial services that would be made available to states, such as a text message system to remind individuals of their upcoming court dates.

Warren would end all contracts that the Bureau of Prisons, ICE, and the U.S. Marshals have with private detention providers.

Warren would grant federal public safety funding to states and localities only if they follow the private prisons and detention facilities ban.

Warren pledges to decriminalize mental health crises through Medicare for All and increased access to mental health care services, funding co-responder initiatives that connect law enforcement to mental health care providers and experts, and piloting evidence-based crisis response efforts for people with mental illness.

Warren would Repeal the 1994 Crime Bill.

Warren would eliminate the crack and cocaine sentencing disparity.

Warren pledges to stop criminalizing homelessness, referencing laws that ban behaviors associated with homelessness like sleeping in public or living in vehicles.

Warren would reverse the Trump administration’s policy expanding pre-trial civil forfeiture at the federal level, and would restrict the use of civil forfeiture overall.

Warren would cap criminal debt collection at a percentage of income for low-income individuals, and supports states capping the percentage of municipal revenues derived from the justice system.

Warren would invest in mental and emotional health programs like peer intervention and early warning programs for law enforcement.

Warren would reverse the Jeff Sessions guidance limiting the use of consent decree investigations to investigate police departments.

Warren aims to incentivize states to empower their attorneys general to conduct oversight of police behavior.

Warren would establish federal standards for the use of force for federal law enforcement.

Warren supports limiting qualified immunity for law enforcement officials who are found to have violated the Constitution, and allowing victims to sue police departments directly for negligently hiring officers despite prior misconduct.

Warren would pass legislation to prohibit racial profiling at all levels of law enforcement.

Warren would expand federal funding for body cameras.

Warren would expand federal funding for public defenders.

Warren would provide funding for language and cultural competency training for public defenders.

Warren would establish an advisory board of people who have experienced violence and formerly incarcerated individuals.

Warren would repeal overly restrictive habeas corpus rules in order to make the appeals process easier for individuals who were wrongfully imprisoned.

Sanders co-sponsored the "Recidivism Reduction and Second Chance Act of 2007

Sanders voted in favor of the 1994 crime bill authored by Joe Biden. He has since stated that this was due to specific provisions in the bill which he favored, including the Violence Against Women Act and a 10-year assault weapons ban. At the time, Sanders stated, “I have a number of serious problems with the Crime Bill, but one part of it that I vigorously support is the Violence Against Women Act. We urgently need the $1.8 billion in this bill to combat the epidemic of violence against women on the streets and in the homes of America.”

Sanders voted for an amendment to the 1994 crime bill to ban the federal death penalty.

Sanders would legalize marijuana and vacate and expunge past marijuana convictions.

Sanders would raise the threshold for when drug charges are federalized, as federal charges carry longer sentences.

Sanders would ban for-profit prisons.

Sanders would incentivize states and localities to end police departments’ reliance on fines and fees for revenue.

Sanders promises to “stop excessive sentencing with the goal of cutting the incarcerated population in half.”

Sanders would reverse the Trump administration’s guidance on the use of death penalty drugs with the goal of ending the death penalty at the state level.

Sanders would abolish the death penalty.

Sanders would end cash bail.

Sanders would end “three strikes” laws.

Sanders would expand the use of sentencing alternatives, including community supervision and publicly funded halfway houses. This includes funding state-based pilot programs to establish alternatives to incarceration, including models based on restorative justice and free access to treatment and social services.

Sanders would make expungement broadly available.

Sanders would remove legal and regulatory barriers and facilitate access to services for people returning home from jail or prison.

Sanders would create a federal agency responsible for monitoring re-entry.

Sanders would enact fair chance licensing reform to remove unfair restrictions on occupational licensure based on criminal history.

Sanders would guarantee jobs and free job training at trade schools and apprenticeship programs for people leaving jail or prison.

Sanders would decriminalize truancy for all youth and their parents.

Sanders would end solitary confinement for youth.

Sanders would fund states and municipalities to create civilian corps of unarmed first responders for low-level incidents.

Sanders would ban the prosecution of children under the age of 18 in adult courts.

Sanders would triple congressional spending on indigent defense, to $14 billion annually.

Klobuchar would create a position in the White House that exists outside of the Department of Justice to advise the president on criminal justice reform issues.

Klobuchar would create a bipartisan clemency advisory board that would include victim advocates and prison and sentencing reform advocates to investigate and review requests for clemency.

As a prosecutor in Hennepin County, Klobuchar pursued harsher penalties for repeat offenses, including drunk driving, failure to pay child support, and more.

In 2004, as District Attorney of San Francisco, Harris refused to seek the death penalty against a man convicted of shooting police officer Isaac Espinoza. She faced opposition from fellow Democrats, including Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) who called for the death penalty at the officer’s funeral. Following that incident, she received almost no support from police groups during her first run for attorney general in 2010.

Harris created the “Back on Track” program which allowed first-time drug offenders, including drug dealers, to get a high school diploma and a job instead of prison time. Adams, Harris’s spokesperson, noted that the program started in 2005, “when most prosecutors were using a ‘tough on crime’ approach.”

Harris promises to end the War on Drugs.

Harris would create grant programs to provide services to those most adversely impacted by the War on Drugs, provide states and localities with funds to make loans to assist small businesses in the marijuana industry, and provide funds for programs that minimize marijana licensing and employment barriers.

Harris is a cosponsor of the Justice Safety Valve Act, which would eliminate mandatory minimums by allowing judges to issue sentences below the mandatory minimum.

Harris would remove the clemency process from the Department of Justice due to inherent conflicts of interest.

Harris would create a new National Criminal Justice Commission to study state and federal criminal justice systems.

Harris would end the use of private prisons.

Harris would work to end juvenile incarceration, life sentences of children, the transfer of children to adult prisons, solitary confinement for children, and criminal charges for school-based disciplinary behavior.

Harris would mandate that federal prisons provide educational and vocational training, and mental health and addiction treatment.

Harris supports ban the box.

Harris introduced the Fair Chance at Housing Act of 2019 with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which helps to remove barriers to obtaining federal housing assistance for individuals with criminal records.

Harris would create a National Police Systems Review Board.

Harris would double the size of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.

Harris would end the use of fines and fees that criminalize the poor, including ending suspension of driver’s licenses for unpaid fines.

Harris would increase prosecutorial accountability and would increase support for public defenders.

Castro promises to end the War on Drugs.

Castro pledges to increase security at U.S. ports of entry to prevent the trafficking of drugs like fentanyl into the U.S. When asked in a Nov. 2019 conversation with IHRC to expand on this promise, Castro responded, “Well I think that again, we need to strike a strong balance to the extent that there’s a usefulness for fentanyl in some instances than similar substances. I mean, I want to make sure that they’re available, but about three or four months ago we had the largest bust of fentanyl in the nation’s history, which was 254 pounds that came through a port of entry in Arizona. What I see is a lot of smuggling through these ports of entry, illegal fentanyl, and I believe that’s one way, that’s one area, where we can do a better job of preventing that entry into the United States, that we can be more vigilant. I see that still as consistent with ensuring that people have what they need and taking a change in direction in cracking down on the individual, which has really been a large part of the war on drugs is penalizing the individuals who end up in the grips of usage and often suffer from that. I don't believe in that approach, but I also don’t believe in substances, illegal substances coming through ports of entry that shouldn’t be coming through there. So, I think that we can do both of those things.”

Castro promises to eliminate the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, and will order a federal review of all other sentencing guidelines to address other possible racial disparities in sentencing.

Castro would reform the plea system, allowing for more support for defendants.

Castro would allow individuals up to the age of 21 to be tried as juveniles.

Castro would repeal the 1994 crime bill’s mandatory minimums and three strikes laws.

Castro would create a new $500 million federal grant program to invest in public defenders.

Castro would work to end abusive civil asset forfeiture.

Castro would ban the use of for-profit contractors in prisons.

Castro would abolish the death penalty.

Castro would strengthen enforcement of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA).

Castro supports reforms to end the practice of shackling mothers during delivery of a child.

Castro would direct the Department of Justice to adequately enforce all laws and regulations to protect the rights of disabled prisoners, require prisons to have designated staff empowered to protect the needs of disabled prisoners, require publicly available data collected on the condition of disabled prisoners, and pass legislation reducing the number of disabled people incarcerated, including by increasing access to criminal justice diversion programs, and providing community-based mental health services.

Castro would repeal the Prison Litigation Reform Act, which significantly restricts prisoners’ ability to file lawsuits based on the conditions of their confinement.

Castro supports improving educational opportunities for juvenile and adult individuals who are incarcerated, such as increasing access to high-level classes, and credit-recovery opportunities.

Castro would promote non-armed responses to 911 calls by establishing partnerships between mental health units and other first responders, including crisis intervention services by medics, counselors, and social workers, rather than armed police officers.

Castro would work to increase housing assistance for formerly incarcerated people, and would pass legislation requiring States that receive benefits to lift the lifetime ban on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits for people with felony drug convictions.

Castro would establish an independent commission to review cases of non-violent offenders and make continuing recommendations to the President on clemency.

Castro would ban the use of deadly force unless there is an imminent threat to the life of another person and all other reasonable alternatives have been exhausted.

Buttigieg plans to eliminate private prisons.

Buttigieg wants to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences.

Buttigieg pledges to commute the sentences of people who are incarcerated in the federal system by establishing an independent clemency commission outside the Department of Justice.

Booker is the author of the 2018 First Step Act, which aims to reduce federal mass incarceration by reducing and restricting enhanced sentences for prior drug felonies, and through evidence-based treatment for opioid and heroin use. This was signed into law by President Trump.

In March 2019, Booker introduced the Next Step Act, which includes a number of criminal justice reforms, including reducing mandatory sentences for non-violent drug offenses, banning racial and religious profiling, removing questions regarding conviction histories from job and other applications, and expunging records for marijuana-related charges.

Booker would eliminate the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine.

Booker pledges to reinvest in the communities most impacted by the failed War on Drugs.

Booker would expand training for law enforcement officers on implicit racial bias, de-escalation and use-of-force.