“This System Is a Moral Horror”
Franklin Bynum is a socialist candidate for judge in Houston. In an interview, he explains his vision for criminal-justice reform, nonprofits' attempts at co-opting reform, and why "capitalism drives the horrors of this system."
In early August, the local Republican Party in Houston, Texas tweeted an ominous-looking picture of a thirty-four-year-old defense attorney standing before a photoshopped hammer and sickle. “If Republicans in Harris County fail to vote a straight ticket,” it warned, “they will help elect a Socialist to the bench.”
That socialist threat is Franklin Bynum, a member of Houston Democratic Socialists of America and a candidate for judge of Harris County Criminal Court at Law 8. His platform includes plans to stop jailing those who can’t pay bail, an end to “plea mill” practices that coerce guilty pleas from defendants in exchange for freedom, support for diversion programs to reduce arrest, an end excessive to court appearances, and providing more police oversight in the courtroom.
Jacobin’s Meagan Day spoke to Bynum about capitalism and racism’s role in mass incarceration, the nonprofit-driven co-optation of the criminal justice reform movement, the political stigma of socialism, and the definition of prison abolition.
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