A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog post entitled, Prison Industrial Complex . Here is a follow up to the original post that considers a different facet of this issue that is plaguing America.
While scrolling through my Twitter feed, I came upon this promoted tweet by Dr. Boyce Watkins, a Professor from Syracuse University and social commentator that made me stop and think. The Prison Industrial Complex has most commonly been considered for its economic and social impacts, however the issue of the disruption of family life that Watkins brings up really changes the playing field.
Factors may be numerous, far and wide, but for Watkins to call something 'the single greatest factor' of the destruction of the black family [structure] over the last four decades is powerful. This statement definitely has the evidence to back it up: there are more African American men in prison today than there were enslaved in 1850. All of these men are now locked up away from their families. Now, one can assume that these men are a danger to society, because they are in prison for a reason, however I beg to differ. The numbers of petty crime offenses such as illegal substance possession and shoplifting incidents that have resulted in jail sentences is egregious (Federal Bureau of Prisons website). Murder crimes and the like are worthy of at least jail time, but to imprison someone for a petty crime (especially one that is most common among African Americans) could be classified as downright racist. These men deserve to be back home with their families. I know this is a slightly naive approach to this issue, but I believe there has got to be a better solution than locking petty crime 'criminals' up for undefined periods of time. What do you think?
I'm not meaning to be a ballbreaker, I think you can do better stuff than this. More detail would be a start.
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