O'Malley sees criminal justice reform as defining issue

Prosecuting gun crimes and assaults as a young Baltimore lawyer in one of the city's most violent districts helped drive Martin O'Malley into public office.

Now the Democratic presidential contender hopes that resume, along with his time as the city's mayor and governor of Maryland, will convince Iowans he's the best candidate to reform the U.S. criminal justice system.

It's a system marked by high incarceration rates and increasing community mistrust of police and has gained attention leading up to the 2016 presidential election.

"We have two problems that are intertwined and distinguish us in a bad way from other nations," O'Malley said in a 40-minute one-on-one interview with The Des Moines Register Saturday. "One is that far more of our citizens lose their lives to violent crime than virtually any other advanced nation on the planet. And related to that is the fact that we incarcerate more of our citizens than any other nation on the planet, which seems counterintuitive for a free people."

MORE:

Download Iowa Caucuses app

Candidate tracker

Full Iowa Caucus coverage

Scaling back on mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes and boosting programs to help prepare prisoners to return home will be major parts of a policy proposal O'Malley's campaign plans to roll out soon. From his time in Baltimore and as Maryland's governor, O'Malley believes he has the most "on-the-ground experience" dealing with public safety issues of any presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican.

But O'Malley will be one of several candidates that Iowans who want changes to the system will have to choose from when they decide which candidate to support in the caucuses, said Guy Cook, a Des Moines lawyer and former assistant U.S. attorney.

"Federal sentencing has to be reformed," Cook said. "And everybody's talking about it."

Republican Sen. Rand Paul has gained credibility as a thought leader on criminal justice issues, supporting legislation that would give judges more options in handing out sentences rather than just following guidelines that can add years to a sentence, Cook said.

And Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in April gave a speech on her own ideas, saying, "We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America."

O'Malley, who at 52 is the youngest Democrat in the field, started working as a Baltimore prosecutor after graduating from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1988. He left the job to run unsuccessfully for Maryland state Senate in 1990.

Still, the time he spent prosecuting crimes left a mark on his approach to governing, he said. At one point, he was assigned to criminal cases in the Baltimore Police Department's Western District, the area where the death of 25-year-old black man Freddie Gray in April set off civil unrest and led to criminal charges against six police officers.

While working in the Western District, O'Malley would be tasked with a stack of 70 cases that needed to be handled over six hours of hearings, he said.

"We would work very hard all day to drain the swamp of violence and then come back the next morning and find that it'd filled up overnight," he told the Register. "It was partly out of the frustration of working there for a couple years, seeing things getting worse rather than better, that motivated me to try to run for office."

O'Malley has a list of priorities that, as president, he'd push police departments nationwide to adopt, including civilian review boards with authority to investigate police brutality complaints.

As a Baltimore City Council member, O'Malley supported such a board. As mayor, he helped get money for the board to hire two detectives that investigated complaints separately from the department's internal affairs office, he said.

"Then you have the additional check," he said. "If civilians feel that the blue code is covering up an allegation of discourtesy or brutality, they can turn to the civilian review board and know that nine citizens run that board."

Civilian review boards have been heralded as an important element in rebuilding trust between police officers and communities in the wake of high-profile deaths at the hands of police like Gray's and Michael Brown's in Ferguson, Mo.

O'Malley's call for these boards builds on recommendations that have already been made by President Barack Obama's administration, said Salma Safiedine, co-chair of an American Bar Association committee on racial justice.

"You can't expect the police force to police the community and police themselves," she said. "I think that's asking a lot."

Review boards in practice, however, have received mixed reviews in law enforcement communities. Cook, who has defended police officers involved in fatal shootings, said it's best to let individual departments decide whether to establish review boards based on their own individual needs.

Police departments nationwide also need to ensure internal affairs departments are staffed at the right levels and regularly report statistics to the public on overall complaints of excessive force or discourtesy by police officers, O'Malley said.

"(In Baltimore) we regularly shared data about discourtesy complaints, brutality," he said. "We wanted the public to see the same graphs that we were seeing."

In polls, O'Malley widely trails Clinton and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who have garnered support from 53 percent and 25 percent of Iowa Democratic caucusgoers, respectively, according to Real Clear Politics' rolling average of polls conducted in Iowa.

But O'Malley's campaign has already released detailed, pages-long policy proposals on issues ranging from immigration to student debt, something that has set him apart from his Democratic rivals.

"My only path to victory is to offer the ideas that will move our country forward," he said.

It's yet to be seen if that will gain him traction in Iowa.

At a campaign stop Saturday in Knoxville, Central College psychology professor Keith Jones, 47, said O'Malley has caught his eye because of his willingness to talk in detail about how he solved problems as a mayor and governor.

"He doesn't seem to be intimidated by difficult problems," he said.