From the beginning of our history, race has structured American institutions – with slavery and colonization as the country’s pair of original sins. Some forms of racialized domination end and then others take their place, as white supremacy reconstitutes itself in new guises. This tragic rhythm beats especially strongly in the carceral state: the Black codes picked up where slavery left off, and the rise of mass incarceration took on the function of Black codes. The growth of mass incarceration has always been an active policy choice to fund a punishment economy, with too many dollars flowing to prisons and law enforcement instead of to programs and institutions that can bolster thriving communities - like jobs, education, and healthcare.

California is essentially at a crossroads: Proposition 47 could be an early step in the movement to dismantle the culture of punishment and incarceration and begin repairing the devastation that over-incarceration has wrought on low-income communities of color, or it could fortify and expand the state’s reliance on incarceration for social control, further bloating the prison system and eviscerating the state’s most vulnerable and destitute communities.

“We pushed up on the BSCC, and changed the way they selected the [Prop 47 committee]. It was not a makeover, it was a takeover!”

- Prop 47 Advocate

“The ideas and movement emerge from those closest to the pain.”

- Prop 47 Advocate

“The first meeting with formerly incarcerated people on the [Prop 47 committee] was a panel. … We totally changed the discourse. … We have a whole different kind of relationship to this issue. We speak from a place of personal experience. We were able to really highlight that we were the authorities.”

- Prop 47 Advocate

The story of Prop 47 implementation advocacy shines a light on the brilliant work of skilled, determined, and tireless advocates, all righteously centering the humanity and expertise of formerly incarcerated people. The heroes of this story undertook the painstaking grind of implementation advocacy that happens in the months and years after the big, thrilling win. Their success also provides a glimpse into how building institutional power can give advocates a perch from which to make social change. The implementation of Prop 47 could easily have reconstituted carceral harms. Instead, at this important site within California’s criminal justice system, advocates stymied the dynamics of the punishment economy and steered history in a new direction.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

• What types of implementation advocacy have you studied or witnessed?

• What power-building methods have you seen advocates use as they turned the administrative state into a site of struggle?

• What effective implementation advocacy strategies have you seen advocates employ?