On Election Day 2017, candidates in Philadelphia, New Jersey, Virginia, and New York won on platforms that proactively embraced criminal justice reform or rejected fear-mongering attempts by opponents to label them as soft-on-crime.

Their victories send a strong signal to politicians running in 2018 elections that they do not need to hide from supporting issues like bail and sentencing reform, ending the death penalty, and restoring the rights of people living with a criminal record. They also represent the continuation of a shifting narrative that rejects the old tough-on-crime politics for a new approach that is rooted in civil rights and redefining community safety.

Philadelphia

By far the biggest criminal justice reform victory came with the election of Larry Krasner as Philadelphia’s next district attorney. Until 2010, Philadelphia had a district attorney known as America’s “Deadliest D.A.” for her robust support of the death penalty. Yet seven years later, Philadelphians elected a candidate likely to become America’s most progressive prosecutor.

Krasner, a civil rights lawyer who has never been a prosecutor and who wears as a badge of honor the fact that he has sued the police 75 times, won on a platform centered on criminal justice reform and ending mass incarceration. He has often spoken about the need for transformational changes in the city’s criminal justice system, and during his victory party, he spoke of the need to reform a system that has “systematically picked on black and brown people.” He has committed to ending the death penalty, ending cash bail, and fighting mass incarceration. The police unions in Philadelphia opposed Krasner’s election, mocking it as “hilarious.”

The issue of ending mass incarceration became a priority in the race because of the work of a coalition of local and national criminal justice and civil rights organizations including the Philadelphia Coalition for a Just District Attorney, Color of Change, Safety and Justice PAC, and the Working Families Party. The ACLU hired 51 canvassers who are formerly incarcerated to knock on 26,000 doors to ask our members, in a non-partisan way, to vote for a district attorney candidate committed to ending mass incarceration.

New Jersey

New Jersey’s race for governor was in many ways a referendum on marijuana legalization and on addressing racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Phil Murphy came out in support of marijuana legalization early on in his campaign, and he consistently framed the issue not just as a financial boost for the state but one of racial justice. New Jersey leads the nation in reducing its incarcerated population, seeing a 35 percent drop in its prison population in the past 18 years, but New Jersey also leads the nation when it comes to racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Black residents are 12 times more likely to be incarcerated as white residents.

Phil Murphy committed to addressing these disparities, and often cited the ACLU of New Jersey’s report finding widespread racial disparities in marijuana arrests in New Jersey. He spoke of the “structural racism in our criminal justice system” and of the need to fight against the for-profit prison industry. His platform included reforming mandatory minimum laws and fully implementing New Jersey’s historic bail reform law.

Murphy’s opponent, Kim Guadagno, on the other hand, ran on a platform that exploited people's concerns about public safety to pander to nativist anti-immigrant sentiment. She tried to label Murphy as soft-on-crime, using Willie Horton style attacks ads — a reference to the infamous 1988 presidential campaign commercial critical of a prison-furlough program supported by Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis. New Jersey voters rejected Guadagno's candidacy and elected Murphy instead.

Virginia

In Virginia, the race for governor turned into a referendum on President Trump’s supposedly tough-on-crime but destructive political playbook. Ed Gillespie defined his campaign by trying to paint his opponent as soft on gangs and criticized Gov. Terry McAuliffe for restoring the right to vote for thousands of state residents living with a criminal record. President Trump supported Gillespie and tweeted that his opponent, Ralph Northam, will “allow crime to be rampant in Virginia,” whereas under Gillespie, “MS-13 and crime will be gone.” Virginia voters didn't fall for it. Northam won.

In a lower profile race, Stephanie Morales won re-election as district attorney in Portsmouth City despite having convicted a white police officer in the killing of a Black teenager. She ran on a platform of police accountability and fighting mass incarceration and cash bail.

New York

In Nassau County, New York, Laura Curran won the race for county executive, despite racist attempts by her opponent to paint her as soft-on-crime. A mailer sent to Nassau voters in support of her opponent Jack Martins featured shirtless Latino men covered in tattoos with the text that Laura Curran is “MS-13’s choice for county executive.” The attempt flopped. Curran still won by 3 percentage points.

Despite not having any criminal justice ballot initiatives in 2017, this year will be remembered as one that saw a continuation of the push against mass incarceration and for criminal justice reform. The politics of mass incarceration are just as influential as the policies of mass incarceration. This is particularly true of district attorneys, who have extraordinary discretion in who gets incarcerated; the problem is that extraordinary power can be ripe for extraordinary abuse. This year suggests that the politics of mass incarceration may begin to change on a broader scale and bend towards justice.

This article is an expression of my personal opinion as a private citizen, and in no way reflects that of the United States Navy, the government, or affiliated agencies and organizations.

My name is Brock Stone. I am a Petty Officer First Class in the United States Navy, and I have been serving for 11 years. I’ve set foot in nine different countries, deployed to Afghanistan, and worked alongside some of the most amazing and diverse people our country has to offer.  I also happen to be a transgender man.

I decided to join the Navy in 2005, inspired by my father’s service and that of many other family members and friends. Right away, I had my work cut out for me, as I had to work hard for several months to fit the physical fitness standards the Navy required. I was finally able to join in 2006 at the age of 23. It was an intimidating step into my future, but I had decided well before the day I was sworn  in that I was going to serve for at least 20  years.

On my in-processing day, I recall very vividly signing a piece of paper acknowledging the “don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) policy: a rule that stated the military agreed to not ask about my sexual orientation, but that I was not to be involved in any “homosexual behavior.” I considered myself bisexual at the time, so I rationalized to myself that I was still left with some dating options, and signed on the line. My gender identity, I’d already buried under a pile of denial in college.

That denial didn’t last long, however. A few years into my service, and I was struggling with a lot of frustration and anger, and even after I stopped denying my gender identity I still had to stay closeted in public. Even when DADT was repealed, trans people were left behind. I turned to cosplay and geek culture to escape a little, but I often wished I didn’t have to wear my real self as a costume. The one bright spot was my wife, whom I met at a convention in 2015, and who immediately accepted me for who I was. Thanks to the DADT repeal, we were, at least, able to marry.

Despite the wide acceptance I enjoyed in my personal life and among my friends, I still lived in fear. Telling the wrong person or posting the wrong thing on social media could mean the end of my career. I hated the idea of living a lie. Honor is a core value within the Navy, and hiding who I was didn’t feel honorable, even though it had no material impact on my ability to serve.

By the spring of 2016, I was almost at my wit’s end. Although I excelled at work and received high marks in performance, being at work was becoming increasingly frustrating. I was virtually living a double life.

Even though by then the power to discharge trans people had been removed from Navy unit commanders, I stayed closeted because it was still technically possible for me to be processed out.

Then on June 30, 2016, then-Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced that the military was halting its ban on allowing service men and women who are transgender to serve.

I watched his press conference in my truck in a shopping mall parking lot, afraid to miss even a second of it. It was a pivotal moment for me. I was finally free, finally safe, finally able to fully excel without fearing for my career.

Moving forward with my transition is incredibly liberating. I feel even more motivated at work, helping my Sailors, and serving my country. While I don’t pretend to speak for all my fellow trans servicemembers, I have heard similar sentiments from many of them. My unit, command, and fellow servicemembers have been incredibly supportive.

So, of course, it was shocking and hurtful to hear of the transgender service ban. All the old fear and anxiety came flooding back, along with a sense of betrayal. I had, in good faith, made myself known. I had been granted license to be myself. And then, just a little more than a year later, that was all taken back.

Now, I wonder whether I’ll be able to continue my career. I must plan for a future that is uncertain and a course which could dramatically change in just a few months. I worry for my family.

I remember the first time someone thanked me for my service. I was flustered and didn’t know what to say. Then, my father reminded me of something: It’s my privilege. Privileges are something to be grateful for, something granted by others. Privilege is also earned.

I am fully committed to the ACLU’s lawsuit challenging the ban allowing trans service men and women to serve, but it took some convincing for me to agree to be a plaintiff. I never wanted a spotlight, I never wanted to be a hero.

But anyone can look at my service record, and the records of other trans servicemembers like me, and see that we have earned the privilege to continue serving our country so long as we continue to be fit for duty. We are equal to the task, and it is our right to have an equal chance to take that task on.

CoreCivic, Inc., the private prison company, will release its quarterly earnings report tomorrow, Nov. 8, to investors, which will mark an extraordinary one-year turnaround for an industry that depends on keeping people trapped in the criminal justice system.

Just over a year ago, the company — then named Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA — was in dire straits. The Justice Department had announced a plan to phase out its private prison contracts, and as its stocks cratered, CCA rebranded itself with the airily vague “CoreCivic” moniker. However, under President Trump, CCA/CoreCivic’s fortunes have reversed. Its stock has climbed in response to the Trump administration soliciting new private prison contracts and adopting policies that promise to throw many more people behind bars.

But CCA/CoreCivic is not betting entirely on federal contracts from its friends in the Trump administration. Two announcements last week highlight the company’s strategy for embedding itself more deeply into state criminal justice systems.

On Oct. 31, the company offered up a $30 million cash payment to the state of Montana in exchange for renewing the state’s prison contract with CCA/CoreCivic for the next 10 years — a contract that, even after the $30 million kickback, will likely gross more than $100 million for the company over the life of the contract.

While it quietly moves to lock states like Montana into long-term prison contracts, CCA/CoreCivic is marketing itself as a friend to the movement to end mass incarceration. The company announced that it will begin lobbying for policies that reduce recidivism and making campaign contributions to candidates who endorse these policies. But it doesn’t take much to see that CCA/CoreCivic’s stated commitment to anti-recidivism initiatives is, well, noncommittal.

Company officials told the Associated Press that the lobbying campaign has no specific budget, and that while support for anti-recidivism policies would be taken into account when deciding which elected officials the company supports, there would be no “hard-and-fast rule” on such questions.

The company’s new lobbying strategy supports some laudable initiatives like “Ban the Box” legislation. But it also continues to promote several harmful policies that would directly benefit its bottom line, as shown in the company policy statement that CCA/CoreCivic issued last week.

This statement, for instance, calls for “[i]ncreased funding for inmate work programs.” Such work programs raise troubling issues: They can be exploitative, and they often deny prisoners a fair wage. They also risk distorting criminal justice policy to ensure a captive labor force.

In California, for example, government attorneysargued against releasing prisoners in order to ensure a steady supply of prisoners to fight wildfires. Such programs can even become a form of human trafficking. In Oklahoma, the ACLU recently filed suit on behalf of people who were sent to D.A.R.P. Inc., a labor camp and purported “drug and alcohol rehabilitation program” that farmed participants out to private corporations — including plastic products manufacturing and chicken processing — where they worked long hours without pay, received little or no actual addiction treatment, and were threatened with prison time if they quit.

The CCA/CoreCivic policy statement also calls for increased funding for “residential reentry” programs, more commonly known as halfway houses. This is an area where the company has recently been expanding.

In a call with investors in August, Damon Hininger, CCA/CoreCivic’s CEO, stated that “we are continuing to aggressively execute our growth strategy” in the residential reentry “market” by acquiring residential reentry facilities around the country. At the time, the company had invested over $270 million in such acquisitions — with $57 million in acquisitions between second quarter 2016 and second quarter 2017 alone. As the American Friends Service Committee and others have warned, such efforts to absorb community corrections into for-profit prison companies pose major threats to the movement to end mass incarceration.

Big companies like CCA/CoreCivic can use their lobbying muscle to squeeze out smaller, community-based nonprofits providing rehabilitation services. Additionally, vertically integrated companies like CCA/CoreCivic can use their community reentry services to keep people unnecessarily involved in the criminal justice system. To avoid being sent back to prison, a person in a halfway house must navigate a maze of behavioral requirements and meet various programming and work requirements. It is all too easy for a company like CCA/CoreCivic to manipulate these requirements and make them more difficult to meet.

CCA/CoreCivic’s takeover of reentry services could negatively affect thousands of formerly incarcerated people and contribute to further expansion of our already bloated and flawed criminal justice system.

And there’s more.

The CCA/CoreCivic policy statement also endorses so-called “social impact bonds” in private prison contracting. Social impact bonds rely on private investors to lend money to government agencies to fund social programs. The idea is that Wall Street will be more willing to take on risky experiments than the agencies themselves. However, the need to achieve short-term, measurable results actually tends to limit innovation and makes such bondsill-suited to address complex social problems like crime and recidivism. Additionally, they divert resources and attention from programs that could be funded by direct government investment.

In the private prison context, social impact bonds are particularly dangerous because they create a seductive illusion that the profit motives of these diversified, multi-billion-dollar, publicly traded companies can easily be contained by cleverly drafted contracts. Accepting this illusion puts great trust in companies that do not deserve it and risks hurtling us into an even more heavily privatized resurgence of mass incarceration.

Don’t be fooled by CCA/CoreCivic’s latest rebranding effort. Its business model depends on having more people trapped in the criminal justice system, and no pivot in marketing strategy changes that.