"Bert Skellie, a 70-year-old retired state employee and civil rights activist, had known about bias in our nation’s criminal justice system for a long time.
All you had to do, he said, is witness who shows up in our courtrooms: mostly young black men. Nothing in his mind could justify a criminal justice system that had essentially eviscerated the African-American community, and black men in particular.
In his mind, that still holds true. Only now Skellie is working to bring about change.
He owes, he said, a debt of thanks to Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” and what amounted to a 2012 a-ha moment.
One-third of black men in the U.S. are likely to spend time in prison at some point in their lives, the law professor wrote, only to find themselves falling into permanent second-class citizenship after their release.
That wasn’t exactly news to Skellie, but until then no one had presented the evidence – pages of statistical and legal citations – that Alexander had. And it wasn’t just that. Alexander went a step further, arguing that the crackdown had little to do with increased crime. It was a deliberate effort to push back the gains of the civil rights movement.
“Her book captured my attention because she had the credentials as a law professor,” Skellie said.
After attending a discussion about Alexander’s book in 2013, Skellie was done talking.
“We needed a movement to change the system,” he said.
He and others from that discussion group invited individuals and organizations that shared their concern to partner with them to end mass incarceration of African-Americans and the stigma associated with it once and for all.
Together they formed an End the New Jim Crow action group in Atlanta.
“We ended up attracting a good many people who’d had experience going to prison,” Skellie said.
That was significant because Skellie didn’t want to be another white “do-gooder” who hadn’t had any personal experience with the system. To be effective, he realized he needed the personal stories and insights of people who had.
James Costen and Bonita Lacy had been there and back.
They believe there should be retribution for crimes committed, but blacks are seldom afforded the same parity and compassion when it comes to punishment.
What’s more, they say, the economic hardship families experience when loved ones are incarcerated often continues after release. A criminal record creates substantial obstacles to employment and decreases earning potential by 10 percent to 40 percent, compared with similar workers.
That isn’t something Costen and Lacy read in a study. They’ve lived it."
The New Jim Crow
No comments:
Post a Comment