Criminal Law Reform
The ACLU of Iowa is committed to working to create an Iowa criminal justice system that is free of racial bias, keeps our communities safe, and is fair to all who come in contact with it.
What you need to know
87 percent
87 percent of people jailed in Iowa in 2015 were awaiting trial and had not been convicted of a crime.
7.3 times
A Black person in Iowa is 7.3 times more likely to be arrested than a white person for marijuana possession, even though both groups use marijuana at about the same rate.
We fight to end excessively harsh policies and racial inequities in the criminal legal system so that all Iowans are treated fairly under the law.
Iowa relies on the criminal legal system to address bigger societal problems, like drug addiction, mental illness, poverty, and underfunded schools. But it is a band-aid fix that has resulted in mass incarceration and wasted trillions of taxpayer dollars. People are subjected to police brutality, over-incarceration, and numerous other unjust consequences in this system too.
If we want to become a more just, equal, and humane society, we must change all steps of the criminal legal system. This includes a recognition of systemic racism and fixing a broken public defense system, bail practices, police misconduct, prosecutorial abuses of power, and punitive drug policies.
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