This summer multiple candidates have rolled out comprehensive plans to reform America’s desperately ineffective, overcrowded Criminal Justice system. For decades prisoners, their families, allies and advocating organizations have been pleading with officials to make Criminal Justice Reform a national priority. Until the current race there hasn’t been a presidential candidate willing to make transformative reforms […]
As we move into the Decarceration Era, organizers in different states are pushing prison officials to dramatically reduce their incarcerated populations. Proposed criminal justice reform legislation is sweeping the nation from the West Coast to the East. On the West cost, in California Initiate Justice organizers are advocating for those incarcerated as youth to have […]
What can we do for the 2.4 millions of men women and trapped in our a nation’s prisons?What can we do for the 38,000 people incarcerated in South Carolina?What can we do for the 1,200 incarcerated in Lee County? We’ve been asking ourselves these questions since the era mass incarceration began to raise eyebrows once […]
I purposely chose the word facetious, because South Carolina’s Dept. of Correction’s Director Bryan Stirling has absurdly decided to address serious issued in South Carolin’a prisons with impotent legislation. The problem in South Carolina’s prisons is NOT the fact that a few prisoners have obtained access to cell phones. The problem is that South Carolina’s […]
Until mass incarceration, over-policing, police brutality and the many other issues associated with police officials are permanently resolved those who maintain these injustices should not be celebrated. They’ve obviously failed. There’s no problem with the celebration of professions that contribute to the benefit of our society as a whole. When thinking about those who serve […]
Black people have exponentially grown as a demographic in the states since our kidnapping. Our population broke a million by the 19th century and continued to increase rapidly to 30 million by the 20th century. While our numbers, and contribution (labor, taxes, etc.) to the United States has grown, unfortunately our influence politically has failed […]
Earlier this month Prisoners in North Carolina received notification (attached below) that new restrictions would be placed on their trust fund accounts (prisoner’s version of a bank account). The new policy once instated would limit their ability to receive funds from those on the outside to only the people on their visitation list effecting over 38,000 […]
In 2016 the Ballots of Bars campaign began as an effort to raise awareness about criminal disenfranchisement in Massachusetts, in collaboration with two incarcerated people and the Emancipation Initiative. Incarcerated activists have identified criminal disenfranchisement as one of the most significant injustices that they face. Incarcerated people have been fighting for their voting rights in Massachusetts for more than 40 years. […]
As I looked through Target’s greeting card section to send something for Christmas I had to remember that the card I chose could be no larger than 6” x 8” with no more than a single fold, commercially produced and made of standard cardstock. According to the Michigan Department of Correction’s mail policy I had […]
Being forced to go in an unfavorable direction because all other paths are blocked is the worst feeling. Sadly, this has become the lifestyle for Blacks in America. Throughout our collective time spent in this country our plate has always been served with whatever society has left over. We understood after suffering through the oppressive […]