Sanders’ criminal justice plan aims to cut prison population
By MEG KINNARD Associated Press
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is proposing a criminal justice overhaul that aims to cut the nation’s prison population in half, end mandatory minimum sentencing, ban private prisons and legalize marijuana. He says the current system does not fairly treat people of color, addicts or the mentally ill.
“We have a system that imprisons and destroys the lives of millions of people,” Sanders told The Associated Press before the planned released of his proposal Sunday. “It’s racist in disproportionately affecting the African American and Latino communities, and it’s a system that needs fundamental change.”
Sanders was promoting the plan during a weekend of campaigning in South Carolina, where the majority of the Democratic electorate is African American. The Vermont senator, who won the support of some younger black Democrats during the 2016 primary, has stepped up his references to racial disparities, particularly during stops in the South and urban areas.
Before about 300 at a town hall in Columbia on Sunday afternoon, Sanders conducted a conversation on the plan with several state lawmakers who have endorsed him. Also part of the discussion was Donald Gilliard, Sanders’ South Carolina deputy political director, who was at one time sentenced to life in federal prison for a nonviolent drug crime.
“Sometimes you don’t even believe what you’re hearing here,” Sanders said Sunday, of the problems he sees in the criminal justice system.
As president, Sanders said he would abolish mandatory minimum sentencing and reinstate a federal parole system, end the “three strikes law” and expand the use of alternative sentencing, including community supervision and halfway houses. The goal is to reduce the prison population by one-half.
“A very significant number of people who are behind bars today are dealing with one form or another of illness,” Sanders said. “These should be treated as health issues, not from a criminal perspective.”
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness , 2 million people with mental illness are booked into jails annually.
Taking aim at what his proposal calls “for-profit prison profiteering,” Sanders would ban private prisons, make prison phone calls and other inmate communications free, and audit prison commissaries for price gouging and fees.
The plan would legalize marijuana and expunge previous marijuana convictions, and end a cash bail system that Sanders says keeps hundreds of thousands who have not been convicted of a crime languishing in jail because they cannot afford bail.
“Can you believe that, in the year 2019, 400,000 people are in jail awaiting a trial because they are poor?” Sanders said. “That is a moral outrage, it is a legal outrage.”
According to the Prison Policy Initiative , more than 460,000 people are being held in local jails around the country while they await trial, with a median bail amount of $10,000 for felony offenses.
Sanders wants to improve relations between law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve. To do that, he proposes to end federal programs that provide military equipment to local police forces, establish federal standards for the use of body cameras, provide bias training and require that the Justice Department review all officer-involved shootings.
“You have a lot of resentment in minority communities all over this country, who see police forces not as an asset but as an invading force,” Sanders said.
On capital punishment, Sanders’ plan formalizes his call to end the federal death penalty and urges states to eliminate the punishment as well.
“When we talk about violence in society and trying to lower the levels of violence, it is not appropriate that the state itself is part of capital punishment,” Sanders said.
Sanders said that over the long term, his plan will save the public money because of reductions to overall incarceration costs.
“It will cost money but it will pay for itself many, many times over,” Sanders said. “Locking people up is very, very expensive.”
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Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP

Funerals Saturday for 4 children killed in day care fire
ERIE, Pa. (AP) — Residents of a Pennsylvania city will gather Saturday to mourn and remember four of the five children who died when fire swept through a child care center.
Funerals for 8-year-old La’Myhia Jones, 6-year-old Luther Jones Jr., 4-year-old Ava Jones and 9-month-old Jaydan Augustyniak will take place at Erie’s Bayfront Convention Center, with visitation before a noontime service.
The funeral for 2-year-old Dalvin Pacley will be held Monday.
Fire officials suspect last Sunday’s blaze was accidental and possibly electrical. Extension cords and other wiring have been sent for examination.
An adult and two adolescent boys were able to escape the fire.
Three of the victims were the children of a volunteer firefighter, Luther Jones. Their mother, Shevona Overton, is also the mother of Jaydan.

New York City subway scare suspect taken into police custody
NEW YORK (AP) — A man suspected of placing two devices that looked like pressure cookers in a New York City subway station, causing an evacuation and roiling Friday’s morning commute, has been apprehended, police said.
Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea tweeted Saturday morning that a man seen in surveillance video holding one of the objects — which police identified as rice cookers —was taken into custody.
Police said cameras captured a man pulling the cookers out of a shopping cart and placing them in the Fulton Street subway station near the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.
A third cooker of the same make, year and model was found about 2 miles away (3 kilometers) on a sidewalk in the Chelsea neighborhood, prompting another police investigation.
Authorities determined they were not explosives.
Many rice cookers look like pressure cookers, which use pressure to cook food quickly — a function that has been used to turn them into bombs.
Dozens of suspicious packages are reported daily in the city, but the proximity of the subway station to the site of the Sept. 11 attacks served to heighten anxiety before police gave the all-clear.
Police have stressed that so far, it isn’t clear if the man was trying to frighten people or merely throwing the objects away.
“I would stop very short of calling him a suspect,” said John Miller, the New York Police Department’s top counterterror official.
“It is possible that somebody put out a bunch of items in the trash today and this guy picked them up and then discarded them, or it’s possible that this was an intentional act.”
Police say they didn’t have details on the man’s apprehension. No charges have been announced.

Section of Pennsylvania Turnpike to close for bridge work
NEW STANTON, Pa. (AP) — Motorists will face detours when a section of the Pennsylvania Turnpike closes for bridge work.
The toll road will close in both directions between New Stanton Exit 75 and Breezewood Exit 161 starting at 11 p.m. Saturday until approximately 6 a.m. Sunday, weather permitting.
The turnpike commission says the closure is needed for workers to safely remove the temporary bridge over the turnpike at milepost 110 in Somerset. A new bridge opened to traffic on July 19.
Motorists will be permitted to enter the turnpike eastbound at the Bedford interchange and westbound motorists can enter the toll road at the Somerset exchange.
Detours will be posted.

Pennsylvania unemployment rate ticked up to 3.9% in July
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s jobless rate is up slightly but remains near record lows under state records that go back four decades.
The Labor and Industry Department said Friday the 3.9% rate in July was 0.1 percent higher than the record low that was in place from April to June.
The national rate of 3.7 percent was unchanged from June.
The size of the state’s workforce rose by 1,000 to nearly 6.5 million. The number of unemployed Pennsylvanians rose by 4,000, which is the first increase in the current calendar year.
The state’s unemployment rate a year ago was 0.3 percentage points higher.
unemployment rate ticked up to 3.9% in July
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s jobless rate is up slightly but remains near record lows under state records that go back four decades.
The Labor and Industry Department said Friday the 3.9% rate in July was 0.1 percent higher than the record low that was in place from April to June.
The national rate of 3.7 percent was unchanged from June.
The size of the state’s workforce rose by 1,000 to nearly 6.5 million. The number of unemployed Pennsylvanians rose by 4,000, which is the first increase in the current calendar year.
The state’s unemployment rate a year ago was 0.3 percentage points higher.

Wolf unveils gun violence effort after Philadelphia shooting
By MARK SCOLFORO Associated Press
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf directed state police and other agencies under his control Friday to focus greater efforts on addressing gun violence, two days after a gunman shot six Philadelphia police officers.
Wolf said set up a new Special Council on Gun Violence and gave it six months to recommend how to reduce mass shootings, domestic violence, suicides and accidental shootings.
He also established the Office of Gun Violence Prevention at the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and delinquency and a violence prevention division within the Health Department.
The announcement had been planned for Thursday but was rescheduled after the nearly eight-hour standoff in Philadelphia that left the officers with injuries not considered life-threatening. A suspect who fired at police from inside a building before finally surrendering has been arrested but not yet charged.
Wolf said state police will expand and support gun buy-back programs and increase monitoring of hate groups and white nationalists. His state police commissioner, Col. Robert Evanchick, said he will set up a task force to consider what steps to take regarding gun buy-back efforts.
The Office of Gun Violence Prevention will work to deter shootings in areas with high rates of violence and coordinate the reporting of lost and stolen guns to police.
The governor’s office says more than 1,600 people died of gunshot wounds in Pennsylvania in 2017.
House Democratic Whip Jordan Harris, who represents a Philadelphia district, recounted how this year in his city there have been eight cases in which at least four people were shot — with victims who were walking down the street, waiting for takeout food, attending a graduation party and gathering to shoot a music video.
“I have to go home to a place where my life is not safe, and there’s far too many Pennsylvanians doing that on a daily basis,” Harris said, wiping back tears at Wolf’s Capitol news conference.
Wolf, a Democrat, also urged the Republican-controlled General Assembly to enact standards for safe gun storage, pass a “red flag” high-risk protection order bill and require state-level universal background checks for gun buyers.
Wolf signed an executive order flanked by activists and Democratic state lawmakers but was not joined by any Republican senators or representatives, a reflection of the polarized nature of gun issues in the politically divided General Assembly.
Sen. Lisa Baker, a Luzerne County Republican who chairs the Judiciary Committee, has scheduled a hearing for Sept. 24-25 on behavioral health, Second Amendment gun rights and related issues.
Baker said in a news release last week that all government officials should be looking for ways to end the plague of mass shootings.
“Taking symbolic steps sends a message, but it ultimately does not save lives,” Baker wrote. “Something unworkable or unenforceable or unable to withstand a legal challenge does not provide the real protection our constituents are demanding.”
House Republican spokesman Mike Straub said violent firearms offenses have fallen by nearly 40% in the state in the past 13 years.
He said the Pennsylvania firearm purchase background checks already exceed what is required by the federal government and argued the Philadelphia police shooting “proves once again that criminals will not follow changes we make to existing firearm laws.”