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.
Evil must be attacked by. . . the day to day assault of the battering rams of justice.
I understood at a young age that administrations come and go, but laws stay. So I decided to become a lawyer in order to help create a more just and peaceful world, not just in a fleeting moment but in a way that will endure from one generation to the next.
Because we always are feeling for justice for all that the reality is, unfortunately, the justice system is skewed, and often people of color do not receive appropriate justice in this country.
Of one thing, however, I am certain. Just as an execution without adequate safeguards is unacceptable, so too is an execution when the condemned prisoner can prove that he is innocent. The execution of a person who can show that he is innocent comes perilously close to simple murder.
We ask for nothing that is not ours by right, and herein lies the great moral power of our demand.
The laws of changeless justice bind oppressor and oppressed; and, close as sin and suffering joined we march to fate abreast.
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