mass incarceration
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Children of Incarcerated Parents Remain Unseen; We Have to Do Better
Not all stories about children with parents in jail involve recounts of glass barriers, letters or collect calls. And sadly, many don’t end with reunions and redemption, but with pain and shame; some stories end way too soon. On Oct. 18, 2007, my father died from a pulmonary fungal infection contracted inside of an environmentally-hazardous…
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Congress Considering Making Pell Grants Available to Inmates, Reversing Decades-Long Ban
With droves of research suggesting education is one of the most effective tools to rehabilitate those currently serving sentences behind bars, Congress is trying to do something to make education more available to inmates. According to NPR, The Restoring Education and Learning Act, a bipartisan bill in Congress would allow incarcerated people to use federal…
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Locking Up Black People Is Big Business
Last week, I got to participate in American Injustice: A BET Town Hall. It’s a series of live conversations with leaders from Cory Booker to Kamala Harris about how we got into this crisis of mass incarceration. It’ll air this Sunday. If there’s one thing I want people to take away from it, it’s that…
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Unable to Press Charges in Jail Death of Mentally Ill Man, Virginia Attorney Indicts Justice System
It should have been clear that Jamycheal Mitchell was not well. At least, that’s what a recent report from Virginia Commonwealth’s Attorney for Portmouth says. Mitchell died at Hampton Roads Regional Jail in 2015, after being arrested several months prior for stealing $5 worth of snacks from a 7-Eleven. A judge ordered Mitchell, diagnosed with…
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This Black History Month, Let’s Recognize the African-American Prisoners Who Helped Build America
Like much of the rest of the discourse around jails, prisons and mass incarceration, Black History Month is not usually a time when we talk about the thousands of black prisoners that were forced to build America after the Civil War. It’s time to recognize them because the postwar South was literally rebuilt on their…
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American Justice: Abuse Domineque Ray as a Boy, Discriminate Against Him as a Man, and on Death Row, Kill Him
Domineque Ray was born in a country that is proud of its stated principles, which supposedly include justice for all. For Ray, justice in America meant enduring sexual and other forms of physical abuse throughout his childhood, so much so that he was ashamed to even admit it to save his own life. Propublica summed…
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Report: Nearly Half of U.S. Adults Have Had a Family Member Incarcerated
According to a new study conducted by FWD.us and Cornell University, nearly half of all adults in the United States—a total of 113 million people—have a family member who is either currently or formerly incarcerated. The study, “Every Second: The Impact of the Incarceration Crisis on America’s Families,” reveals the damage that incarceration inflicts upon…
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2 Texas Judges Sent 20 Percent of All Juveniles to State Prisons Last Year
Two Harris County Texas judges accounted for more than one-fifth of all children sent to the state’s juvenile prisons in 2017. Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority of the children were black or Latinx. The Houston Chronicle reports: The two courts — overseen by Judges Glenn Devlin and John Phillips — not only sent more teens to…
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A Thank-You Letter to Kim Kardashian for Proving White Privilege Is Real
Dear Kim Kardashian West: As you bask in the adoration and applause for the part you played in Alice Marie Johnson’s freedom, I’m sure I’m the last person you want to hear from (not that you even know I exist). But I’d like to thank you for proving to the world that white privilege is…