Our mission.
The mission of the Racial Justice Working Group for the Northern District of California (RJWG-NDCA) is to identify racial injustice in the federal criminal legal system and to develop the policies, practices, and training necessary to eliminate our shared legacy of racism, bias, and white supremacy.
We must ensure that grand juries and juries reflect a diverse and fair cross-section of our community.
We must ensure that members of all communities within our district have equal access to jury service.
We must address disparate policing of communities of color.
We must address the effects of systemic racism on charging, pretrial release, sentencing decisions.
We must address the effects of implicit bias on charging, pretrial release and sentencing decisions.
We must address mass incarceration through mechanisms such as alternative forms of punishment
Who we are.
We are members of the federal criminal defense bar intent on achieving racial justice in the federal criminal legal system.
We are practitioners with diverse lived experiences.
We have witnessed – over our many collective years of federal practice – the effects of structural racism and implicit bias in every aspect of the federal criminal legal system including our own work as defense counsel.
We understand more clearly than ever that the criminal legal system treats people of color more harshly at every stage of the process – from policing through post- conviction supervision.
We are deeply committed to doing the hard work now, however difficult or painful, to identify and redress racism and bias on a case by case basis and, more importantly, on a systemic level in our District.