New Virginia progressive Democrat Gov. Abigail Spanberger was sworn in on January 19, and she wasted no time underlining her determination to turn the Old Dominion into the next cultural California. A leftist legislative blitz is on the horizon, and one of the most startling revelations of planned Democrat activity is a proposal to radically reduce criminal sentencing.
A measure “sponsored by Delegate Rae C. Cousins, who represents Richmond, would eliminate or reduce mandatory minimum sentences for crimes including assault on a law enforcement officer, rape and manslaughter. It would also repeal mandatory minimum sentencing for child sex crimes that carry mandatory life sentences,” The Washington Times reported on January 20.
“The activist group Justice Forward Virginia lists the bill as a top legislative priority for the General Assembly’s 2026 session,” the paper noted.
Indeed, it does. An examination of this legal organization, which wields substantial clout among Virginia Democrats, shows a stout commitment to radical “social change” via “criminal justice reform” that makes a mockery of the conviction process. That this has already been tried to disastrous effect under its previous name, “decarceration,” during the feverish days of George Floyd rage does not appear to dissuade Virginia Democrats in the least.
The Virginia Progressive Version of Reform
Several key “Leadership Team” personnel at Justice Forward Virginia hail from a Northern Virginia nexus that, due mostly to its existence as a federal employee bastion of the Greater Washington, DC, area, is culturally more akin to San Francisco than Roanoke. The vast growth of the DC suburbs in Northern Virginia in recent decades has cast an enormous political shadow over the rest of the state, with its heavily populated blue power base increasingly overwhelming the red rural areas outside its cosmopolitan bubble.
Justice Forward Virginia founder Bradley Haywood is the former chief public defender for Arlington County and Falls Church. Haywood makes no bones about his commitment to radical activism in the legal sector.
In June 2022, he wrote an essay for Inquest, an online “forum for advancing bold ideas to end mass incarceration in the United States.” Haywood bluntly laid out his far-reaching judicial goals.
“Fairer, more humane prosecutorial practices make a difference, but transformative change will only come once we re-examine the laws and policies prosecutors are expected to enforce, and overhaul the broader system in which prosecutors, as it turns out, are but one significant cog in a complex machinery of injustice,” Haywood asserted.
In 2021, Justice Forward Virginia promoted a bill to make it easier for criminal defendants to use mental incapacity as a defense. Haywood “offered the example of a homeless, schizophrenic defendant who is charged with burglary for entering a business in search of a place to sleep,” The Virginia Mercury reported at the time.
“Burglary requires intent to steal,” Haywood told the media outlet. “Well you might want to know what’s going on in his head in order to explain he actually don’t have intent to steal, he just didn’t know where else he could sleep. That is what this bill would allow.”
Far more disturbingly, Haywood is eager to extend this same wide berth to the most heinous sex offenders, including child rapists.
They Don’t Belong in Prison?
“Here’s what all practicing attorneys in the know, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats,” Haywood declared in a Jan. 21 X post. “The least defensible, most unjust mandatory minimums are actually the mandatory life penalties for sex crimes.”
