Chesa Boudin is interviewed by Magnus Linton about prison policy and legal philosophy

Magnus Linton meets lawyer Chesa Boudin in a conversation about prison policy in the US and Sweden

When Sweden now Lakes The largest prison expansion of the land once from today’s 9,000 places from today to 29,000 to 29,000 within ten years before the criminal policy Step the thoughts of the 1980s in California: in the course of a decade the number of prisons started in the most densely populated state of the US and while mayors and builders were cheering. A bit in the zero zero, when twice as many Americans worked in the crime bureaucracy than in the car industry industry, the system had reached the end of the road, purely financially. But also, some mean moral.

– The prison population has since fallen drastically. Nowadays California has a lock -in frequency that is about half of what it was when it peaked. Prisons are closed, others are half empty.

The man is that Chesa BoudinPublic Prosecutor in San Francisco 2020-2022, today research leader at the Berkeley School of Law and High profile lawyer in the reform of criminal policy for reduced prison use that has its strongest attachment in California.

– There has also been a cultural change in the past twenty years, a kind of consciousness of what the prison industrial complex has meant, that is, what forces the United States drove to exclude more people than any other country in the world.

His own life story Until the position of the legal philosophical hate objects of the last movement could be Hollywood material. When he was 14 months old, his parents, two Jewish radicals in the far left of that time, robbed a value transport in New York to finance the Black Liberation Struggle in the underground movements Black Liberation Army and the weather underground. Three police officers died in the shooting. Boudin’s mother and father were convicted of murder and were then locked up for 22 and 40 years respectively. The baby who lost both his parents at night was cared for and raised into a star student at Yale by another radical couple, active in the same political environments as his parents.

Given the completely different political and crime cultural contexts, comparisons between the US and Sweden are difficult. Although the prison population has fallen since the zero zero, without increasing crime, the United States is still the country in the world that holds most of the population. In the prison year per head of the population, Sweden is worldwide, last week’s big penalty package, in the other extreme. Let yourself be locked up. So far. But Boudin believes that studies from the American prison explosion learn for everyone. And one of his points is about pace, how quickly everything can go.

-The 1970s was the American prison frequency in line with other Western countries.

In prison prison Classic “are prisons outdated?” From 2003, written in the years when the American prison expansion culminated, lives the feminist and cultural critic Angela Davis With exactly the speed. In the 1990s, a new facility was opened in the American countryside every two weeks and many quickly became crucial for the survival of the local economy. In just five years, between 1990 and 1995, the number of black women in captivity rose by 78 percent; In California there were now more women in prison than in 1970 in the entire United States. And then a bit in the zero zero, without any big debate, suddenly two of the world’s total nine million prisoners were imprisoned in One Nation, vs.

The racist structure of the reaction is well documented, but it was of course also a way, such as Sweden today, more or less desperately dealing with a moving but real material reality of rapidly escalating violent crimes. But when the fine was tightened and new prisons were built and filled, a message also shocked the right: the bill. The costs.

– The prison levels were extremely high during the zero zero. Leading people in both parties, even many deep conservatives, discovered that this was not a smart policy. That it was financially untenable to put so many people in prison for so long and that we could lower taxes if we shortened the fine.

But the alliance between Left that meant that the massive lock became a horrible concrete concretion of the gaps of the country and the law that the tax wanted to lower was also followed by legal pragmatism.

– The turn came a lot because of the courts. Some organizations started to sue states, especially California. At the end of the Zero Zero, the Supreme Court gave various judgments that judged that the way of California to deal with prisoners broke the constitution and therefore a clear reduction in the number of prisoners were trapped. Similar things then happened everywhere in the country, which led to various creative reforms at state level, which meant increased release and reduced the use of prison sentences.

In Sweden, a place Boudin will visit soon, the movement will go as you know in the opposite direction with furious speed. His role model in the form of a Scandinavian legal tradition that is extremely restrictive with prison and children is not in prison on the way to their way. On Thursday, the major investigation of the criminal reforms proposals for fines for fifty crimes and a doubling of prison time for serious crime types of 12 to 24 years in prison. This is after a new report from Brå has just announced that the number of prisoners have doubled since 2015.

The investigation expects the sharpening to generate 16,000 more convicted prison years per year, up to an annual increase in cost for the prison and probation service of SEK 16.3 billion. Attorney -General Gunnar Strömmer discovered that it is about “the greatest reform of the Swedish criminal system in modern times” and the national police chief and the researcher Petra LundhHard -controlled by the guidelines, stated that Sweden is now over to “a completely new image of crime and punishment”.

In anticipation of the new prisons that are being built, interns are outsourced to institutions in the Baltic States. Director – General of the prison and probation service Martin Holmgren Note that double coating – two prisoners in each cell – is “the new normal” and that triple coating will be needed in the future to cope with the enormous inflow. And under the surface, wake -up interests re -group their lobby groups in the once sensitive field of private prisons. Venture capitalists who became billionaires with free school reform now send more ties to politicians with the message that they can easily sell prison plates at half of what the state pays today.

Chesa Boudin screws on An. He knows that his story about California as a progressive spearhead, as it is mentioned in a new book, “Demontling Mass Incarceration” only lasts today. Trump Has limited support for the west coast and the state remains democratically dominated, but the progress of law is also visible in California and in recent years a weakened support for what his opponent calls for soft-crime movement is clear. After an economically well -pumped campaign, he himself was voted his position as public prosecutor.

– Politicians use the feelings of cynical people when it comes to crime. Although crime has fallen over the past 30 years, people still feel that the crime has increased during this period. Nowadays we are thanks to the absorption of low levels in almost all crime categories, the truth is that San Francisco is one of the absolutely safest cities in America. But people feeling Yet the crime got out of hand.

He continues:

-Neting a debate that I visited, five politicians who are looking for voices to respond to this general emotional condition by describing themselves as serious crime. The moderator was then with the fact that the crime is currently a record low – but then the rebellion in both panel and the public and several people got up and shouted that the statistics were fake. They did not stand out with the actual check.

Legal Philosophical Paradigm Shift of Sweden According to the government, it is about shifting the focus from criminal to the victim. The old Sweden was occupied with the first, the new Sweden with the other. And the recovery tool and the respect shown is the prison. The consequences of the system – for crime, for safety, for society – that played such a major role in the idea of ​​the old order, are secondary to the new ones. And when Petra Lundh, in the light of the fact that neither research neither shows nor experience from comparable countries that more prison gives less crime, got questions about what the idea was that the massively extensive prison practice would be in the long term lead to The answer was clear, but without a vision: “considerably longer imprisonment.”

Chesa Boudin says he knows nothing about the Swedish opinion, but that it is “a tragic fact” in the United States that dedication to the important issue of the victims is associated with the tough crime line.

– For investigation here it appears that when victims of crime are asked about what measures they want, this is rarely serious punishment. Most people want a little more than measuring justice and recovery in the number of prison years. And in this country we are bad at offering victims something other than a harsh punishment from the person who let him suffer. We seem to have unlimited means for the police, lifelong sentences and death sentences – but no means for things that would improve the daily life of the victim: personal protection, therapy, loss of income compensation, help to another house. Things that would help them heal. And give the feeling that the system is about. For all the criminal policy that claims to build on evidence, it is super important to also provide solutions to the victims of crime.

Chesa Boudin today speaks at a conference in Stockholm under the headline “Is the stricter punishment the road to reduced crime?” Institute for Future Studies.

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