As an attorney, I deal with the law all day, every day. As a criminal defense attorney, I’m often working with clients that are getting the short end of the stick. I see the impact that policy has on my clients’ lives and it is often devastating. Sometimes the best of intentions result in overly long prison sentences, job and home loss, or young people being institutionalized and sent down a bad path so early in life.
I find it important to be involved in the creation of policy because of my experiences. I want society to treat those on the margins better. I want society to do better with mental health. And so I participate in forming policy when I can. The policy work that gets hammered out behind the scenes eventually leads to legislation that politicians have to stand by and what gets passed turns into laws that govern us – with great success and sometimes terrible unintended consequences.
It’s difficult, nearly impossible work, but it matters.
It’s difficult because people that work hard on policies don’t want to be told that what they’ve been doing isn’t working.
It’s difficult because coming to consensus that something is wrong with a system can be tricky when you’re in a room full of people of diverse opinions. It’s trickier still to determine what aspect you want to fix, and how you want to fix it. Each step of the process can get gummed up in disagreement and often results in narrow focuses that don’t address macro systemic issues.
And it’s the most difficult when the political stakes of making a mistake are so high that one mistake is enough to ruin a career. In this scenario, much of politics is skillful inaction.
But policy work is for the betterment of society. For creating who we want to be together and how we want to get there together. Individuals shouldn’t work alone to come up with the best solutions – we should work together, we are individuals, different and diverse, and working together towards a common goal brings about better, more effective results. We have to be patient and flexible so that something greater than our individual agenda can come about.
We can debate the ways to get to the goal, but if we have the same destination in mind, we can get there.
We have to be more forgiving to policymakers and politicians to allow them to try new things without automatically risking their careers.
We have to respect the work that people have been tirelessly doing since the beginning of our country, and instead of outright trashing their policies, look for ways to improve them. We need to remember that most people who engage in policy work, do so out of a desire to do public service.
When we can put these priorities first, great things can happen. The road is long and bumpy, but it does lead to a better place for all of us.
To get engaged in the policy work in the criminal defense community here in Colorado, check out these organizations:
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