This video cast topic is an update on the roots of mass incarceration and the Broken Justice system.
Slavery
I know that our viewers understand that the first enslaved people were sold in Jamestown, in 1619. This started centuries of oppression of people at the margins.
And you know that America and the White House were built by slaves. And that white Americans profited from forced Black labor.
Jim Crow
In 1865, slavery ended, but oppression did not. Enter the so called “Jim Crow” era which effectively legalized segregation in all aspects of American life, for the next 100 years and brought terror against Black people, intended to maintain the status quo.
It wasn’t until the 1960s, with the passage of the Voting Rights and Fair Housing acts that the Jim Crow era officially ended.
In the housing boom of the 1950s, as white America began building wealth in the suburbs, Black people, were deliberately and systematically shut out, a method called “redlining”.While the law made redlining illegal, racism in the mortgage industry didn’t go away.
Similarly, the end of slavery didn’t stop former slaveholders from thinking of Black people as slaves. The 13th Amendment outlawed slavery, but left a loophole known as “except as punishment for crime.” States throughout the former Confederacy immediately began drafting laws guaranteed to lead to the arrest of Black people. The roots of today’s mass incarceration are in those laws.
There’s a direct line from slavery to the fact that the average Black family has only 10 % for every dollar held by the average white family. And, while blacks are only 13% of the overall population, they make up 40% of the prison population
Slavery’s impact is felt every single day by African Americans.
The results of a national research by the Open Society Institute,, say that most Americans believe the country’s criminal justice system comprises an ineffective, purely punitive approach to crime.
Mass Incarceration
Americans want to attack the causes of crime rather than the symptoms;
A shift has primarily come in the attitudes of those groups that traditionally favored a punitive approach to criminal justice. (remember the War on Drugs?).Today, a solid majority of every demographic group—including men, whites, and people with less than a college degree—support an approach dealing with the causes of crime.
Budget Shortfalls and Prison Spending
42 of the 50 states are running budget deficits. Given a choice of six budget areas that could be reduced to help states balance the budget, the public places spending on prisons at the top of their list, tied with transportation.
Americans would take the budget ax to prisons much more quickly than to childcare for working families, security against terrorism, education and job training, or healthcare. Hispanics and blue-collar workers are among the strongest supporters of cutbacks in prison spending
The War on Drugs
Many nonviolent offenders are receiving prison sentences that are counterproductive and unduly harsh.
Americans describe drug abuse as a medical problem that should be handled mainly through counseling and treatment.
According to the research, Americans believe that today’s prisons are no more than "warehouses," providing little or no rehabilitation or reentry programs, that instead simply store criminals for a period of time and then dump them back on the street, no different than when they were first incarcerated.
Changing Views on Mandatory Sentencing
The public has now turned against previously popular mandatory sentences, such as "three strikes" provisions.
Prevention is Nation’s #1 Criminal Justice Goal
Americans see prevention as the most important function of the criminal justice system, and also the function that is most sorely lacking. Several groups rank after-school activities ahead of values...