While mass incarceration is a national crisis, it was built locally.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how the issue of mass incarceration is not just a national problem but also rooted in local policies and actions.
James Forman Jr. emphasizes that the crisis of mass incarceration in the United States is a significant issue that arises from local decisions and circumstances. It suggests that to understand and address this problem, one must look closely at local justice systems, law enforcement practices, and community impact rather than solely viewing it as a nationwide phenomenon.
In practice
During a community meeting on social justice reform.
In court, judges tell people that their conviction carries a sentence of years, or probation. The truth is far more terrible. People convicted of crimes often become social outcasts for life, finding it difficult or impossible to rent an apartment, get a job, adopt children, access public benefits, serve on juries, or vote.
African-Americans have always viewed the protection of black lives as a civil rights issue, whether the threat comes from police officers or street criminals. Far from ignoring the issue of crime by blacks against other blacks, African-American officials and their constituents have been consumed by it.
A black man of my generation born in the late 1960s is more than twice as likely to go to prison in his lifetime then a black man of my father's generation. I was born after the Voting Rights Act, after the Civil Rights Act, after the Fair Housing Act.
Mass incarceration and its never-ending human toll will be with us until we come to see that no crime justifies permanent civic death.
The only news most people ever hear about the inner city comes from grim headlines; the only residents they can name are characters on 'The Wire.' Of course, ignorance of a community doesn't stop outsiders from having opinions about it or passing laws that govern it.
We need to hire more black police officers in this country because these are good jobs, and African Americans should have their fair share of good jobs. But we shouldn't do it because we think that's going to change policing. We have to push for police reform in other ways.
Global warming is a justice issue. It's a justice issue because global warming is theft - theft from our own children and grand children, of their right to a livable future. It's a justice issue, because its victims are, and will be, disproportionately poor and of color, those least able to contend with or to flee, the storms, droughts, famines, and rising tides of global warming.
The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.
I think this country would be much better off if we did not have capital punishment.... We cannot ignore the fact that in recent years a disturbing number of inmates on death row have been exonerated.
We black men have a hard enough time in our own struggle for justice, and already have enough enemies as it is, to make the drastic mistake of attacking each other and adding more weight to an already unbearable load.
The power to arrest - to deprive a citizen of liberty - must be used fairly, responsibly, and without bias.
I cannot see any of these death penalty cases where there hasn't been a violation on the ground of either poverty or race. If we can ever get that straightened out, it will help. But, of course, the real answer to it is to do away with the death penalty.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.