DALLAS – Weeks ahead of the November 6th election, the ACLU of Texas hosted a public forum today to give the Dallas County district attorney candidates an opportunity to share their thoughts on smart justice reform. Dallas residents affected by the justice system took turns asking questions about ending mass incarceration, ending cash bail, and increasing transparency.
“There’s no more important place for us to be this morning than to discuss your Dallas district attorney candidates and what this means for you as a community and individually,” said Sharon Watkins Jones, director of political strategies for the ACLU of Texas. “We refer to this campaign as smart justice rather than criminal justice because it doesn’t make any assumptions about guilt or innocence.”
The forum was attended by candidate John Creuzot. The other candidate, and current district attorney, Faith Johnson, was also invited, but she declined the invitation.
“We’re going to focus on risk assessment and we’re going to take care of that fact that there’s a lot of people there who can be released,” said John Creuzot, candidate for Dallas County district attorney. “When we do that we should reduce jail population, we should reduce jail costs, which means we should reduce tax costs and maybe we can invest that money into things like treatment.”
Find out more information about the ACLU’s Campaign for Smart Justice.
