![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() We distract ourselves from thinking about it by discussing the high price of fighting crime, or we bitterly debate the efficacy of helping others by means of expensive social programs. No mind, because we rarely see these people, do we? Wrong. We aren’t experiencing a mass incarceration crisis, this is a hyper incarceration crisis. In thirty years, our prison population has quintupled. Another 4.8 million are under parole supervision or probation. About 2.24 million people in this country are now being held in federal and state prisons or local jails-more than one-quarter of the world’s total of eight million prisoners. Meanwhile, millions of young men and women graduate from the streets and matriculate to prison rather than to college. The great issues of poverty, race, civil rights, exploitedworkers, or access to quality public education seem abandoned. It seems political debate has become more and more preoccupied with power maintenance, with few real solutions ever contemplated,let alone offered. With each letter I thought more about our broken systems of incarceration and our collective lack of political will to change something that is deeply flawed. After the publication of my first book, Letters to a Young Brother, I began receiving an increasing number of moving letters from inmates who had read it. ![]()
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