What might Martin Luther King seek as the next step in federal criminal justice reform?

A busy day has meant that I only just now finished my annual MLK day tradition of listening to the full "I Have A Dream" speech Dr. King delivered in the "symbolic shadow" of Abraham Lincoln in August 1963. (I like to think that the fact I still get choked up is says more about MLK than about me.)  In prior posts on this day, some of which are linked below, I have quoted from Dr. King's speeches and writings and also have asked questions about the intersection of the civil rights movement and criminal justice reform.  Today I will do both by first briefly quoting from Dr. King's famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail: 

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.  Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town....

I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham.  Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.  We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.  Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea.  Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds....

How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust?  A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.  An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.  To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.  Any law that uplifts human personality is just.  Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.... Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application....

Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.  We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.  Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.  Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

In the near aftermath of the enactment of the FIRST STEP Act, I am eager to praise Congress for passing a law that "uplifts human personality" and seeks to lift our national prison policy from the quicksand of too many petty injustices to a more solid rock of human dignity.  But, to be true to its name, the FIRST STEP Act should be only the first of a number of federal criminal justice reforms that could further "make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood."  Especially because I sincerely believe we all exist in an "inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny," I am eager to hear what others think the great Martin Luther King would advocate as the next step in federal criminal justice reform.

Links to some prior MLK Day posts:

• Should criminal justice reform be the new civil rights movement?
• Honoring MLK by asking hard questions
• Reflecting on race and criminal justice realities to honor MLK's legacy
• Another reminder of race and criminal justice realities to honor MLK's legacy
• Is there less discussion of race and criminal justice since Obama's election?
• NPR's Fresh Air celebrates MLK Day by discussing The New Jim Crow
• Fittingly for MLK day, Prez Obama laments class and race disparities from pot prohibition
• MLK marijuana mash-up: "I Have A Dream..." we are free at last from pot prohibition
• Some still timely phrases from MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech for advocates of criminal justice reforms 
• Some new quotes at the end of the latest MLK day