Many of the voters Harris needs — especially younger ones — see mass incarceration as the defining racial justice and civil rights issue of our time. We teach at law schools, and we see students like these every day. When they told us — and boy, did they tell us — that President Joe Biden didn’t inspire them, one of the issues they cited most often was criminal justice.

Beyond politics, justice reform is the right thing to do. Although the marches that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020 have diminished, the issues that sent so many to the streets haven’t gone away.

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