Campaign Website: www.kristianadeleon.com

1. What is your stance  on establishing statewide independent jail oversight? If you oppose this initiative, what alternative measures would you propose to address the high rate of jail deaths in Washington? 
    I am firmly in favor of this, and I am writing these responses after having just toured the SCORE jail and talking with formerly incarcerated people who spent time in both that and other correctional facilities. The number of deaths is unacceptable. What I am hearing from both formerly incarcerated people and staff is that drug addiction and overdoses are huge contributing factors to deaths in jails, and that staff are struggling to keep up with managing the health and safety of those in their custody. I am firmly in favor of statewide independent jail oversight, and that we need to create more regulations and funded mandates for our prisons that require that more medical care and monitoring is routinely provided. The fact that so little exists in so many of our prisons is incredibly inhumane. Our prison system as it is, is inherently not set up for rehabilitation or "correction," despite the name.

   This means that the longer term solution is to create more laws and, again, funded mandates that use evidence-based programs and therapies that reduce the numbers of individuals coming into prisons due to crimes committed as a result of addiction, experiencing poverty and even homelessness, or otherwise living in desperate circumstances. We need to invest more in diversion programs, therapeutic courts, and community courts to stem the influx of people who come into these doors, and curb the crisis of those who do not come out of those doors alive.

2. How would you advocate for a state statute to regulate and restrict the use of spit hoods or transport hoods by law enforcement and EMTs?
   I would be glad to build on the work you have already been doing to eliminate, or at the vey least, severely reduce the use of spit hoods and other restrictive devices that are known to cause injury or even death and work to find alternative solutions to times when first responders need to take more measures if an individual is likely to cause serious injury to themselves or others. This is a case of why we need more extensive training and more regulations around which devices can be used and when. I plan to work with stakeholders - and prioritizing the voices of survivors, families of survivors, and of course, professionals and advocates like you who have already been putting in the work on crafting better solutions. I understand that the work of EMTs as well as police offers insight into the kinds of circumstances that cause people in the first responder field to use them to begin with. Ultimately, should I be serving on any of the relevant committees, I would work to pass this legislation, and also work with caucus members to further develop and pass this kind of bill. With so much change in the legislature, should you need a sponsor, count me in.

3. In cases where individuals are killed or injured at the hands of police, what specific measures would you advocate for to ensure law enforcement officers are held accountable and to prevent future incidents? 
   I voted down a police contract in our city because it came with raises and other bonuses but no additional accountability provisions (as well as out of concern for the precedent it would set on our budget - which turned out to be a well-founded fear). We absolutely need to employ more staff, including social workers and peer navigators, to deploy into situations where their invaluable skillsets would contribute to the work normally relegated to law enforcement - including helping people who are experiencing a mental health crisis, an addiction withdrawal or overdose, homelessness, or any other crisis where the concern is less about enforcing the law as much as it is about upholding a vulnerable person's humanity. When I was a retail worker, I saw individuals who appeared to be in crisis outside the store. When we called 911 asking for medical help, and despite making it clear that we were looking for care and not "trespassing" issues, the dispatcher still sent officers only to remove the person. I still think about how our laws set us up to see everything through the eyes of policing rather than through actually addressing the root causes of these social concerns. I was dismayed that even in my party, we have swung the pendulum on police reform back to the side of the officers' guilds and away from survivors. Where is our moral fiber, and why do we always sacrifice the most vulnerable to protect our own careers? I understand the need for working with law enforcement as stakeholders, and/but there is a huge difference between working with them on pursuits and literally pursuing their endorsements and money. This is simply not something I have done on the City Council of Black Diamond.

4. What is your position on the proposed Traffic Safety for All policy, which  would direct law enforcement officers to allocate  their resources towards  prioritizing stops for drunk driving, distracted driving and reckless driving rather than non-public-safety-related traffic infractions such as expired tabs or broken tail lights?
   I am completely in favor of this. The emphasis must always be on public safety. The bonus is that it can honestly continue to deflate the dog whistles surrounding "police pursuits" and how "officers can't enforce anything" - when the main issue has always been around how traffic stops have historically, and far too often, excuses for biased policing rather than the intent of the law, which is on public safety.

5. As a member of the 2025 legislature, would you support legislation to establish an Office of Independent Prosecutions such as the one proposed in HB 1579? 
   Yes, wholeheartedly.

6. Do you support giving additional authority to the State Attorney General to investigate civil rights violations within law enforcement agencies, as proposed in HB 1415?
   Yes, absolutely.

7. If elected, what specific measures would you support to retroactively address excessively long sentences, reduce racial disparities created by past sentencing practices, and ensure a fairer, more equitable legal system moving forward?
   So many people in our prisons are serving time for crimes that reflect the crime of a lack of opportunity. We have still not done enough to remedy the lives interrupted or worse due to our inequitable enforcement of the law, and I worry that with the SCOTUS decision, we will be sending even more people to prison for the crimes of losing their homes. We need to do more to expunge criminal records of those whose crimes are tied to possession of drugs - and especially drugs like cannabis - and also create more equitable paths to employment with career counselors and headhunter-like advocates for people previously denied opportunities. I wouldn't be opposed to reparations for those who were imprisoned for crimes tied to cannabis, in particular, as we cannot otherwise give back the time they lost behind bars. We need to invest more in therapeutic and community courts beyond what our state currently does, and also I invite your legal expertise in how we reform the prosecutorial branch of local court systems to become part of this process to cut off the flow of the pipeline to prisons, as often it is in prosecutors' offices where people go on to languish in the legal system. This is also why I am running primarily on public education: our lack of investment in our youth, along with housing and healthcare, is the leading reason for why we have the "school to prison pipeline." For more details to ameliorate the harm already done to former incarcerated people, I do seek to work with you on how we can provide scholarships, training programs, and even advocates who can vouch for these individuals in seeking careers. I also believe we need to do more in our policies to actively discourage businesses from extensive criminal background checks, especially for non-violent crimes and for crimes not directly tied to future employment (i.e. people engaged in white collar crimes going into business leadership positions).

8. What is your stance on eliminating the use of solitary confinement​, and what specific measures would you advocate for to reduce its use and address its impact on incarcerated individuals?
   I've been thinking about this question a lot, especially in light of conversations with staff at local correctional facilities. I understand that funding and resources are a problem, especially if there are people who are currently isolated because they pose threats to others. Ultimately the problem is far bigger than the question of where incarcerated people stay, as this comes at the intersection of mental health, behavioral health, and the lack of investment in these individuals long before they found themselves in prison. One of my college professors was in solitary confinement for a total of 16 years, and it was because of Chairman Mao --- and yet, here we are, becoming more like a totalitarian state in terms of our inhumane prison treatment. Ultimately, I agree that we must pass the new iteration of HB 1087 to severely curb solitary confinement, as it is once again indicative of how our prison system is not actually meant to be a place of rehabilitation in its current form. That we are spending so much money on other psychiatric help, and that many in these conditions later find themselves caught in the recidivist revolving door, we can see that solitary confinement is far less a band-aid to a gaping wound as it is salt on the wound. We still need to engage corrections staff on ways that they can keep themselves and other incarcerated people safe, while significantly reducing solitary confinement. I'd reduce the bill's goal of 120 days down to far less time - and would invite you to work on a bill that makes it so those in solitary go for far less time than potentially 4 months of essentially zero meaningful human interaction.

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