Positive Steps Towards Racial Justice

In one of the darkest years in our country’s history there is good news for the holidays amidst a government shutdown. Two amazing pieces of legislature passed by both the House and the Senate brings us closer to racial justice.  Prison reform and outlawing lynching as a federal crime is now the law of the land. Both of these issues have been embedded in our racist laws, policies and social norms for a long time. Prisons and lynching strip individuals of their human rights representing the dark side of our democracy.  Today there is some hope for reform.

The Justice for Victims of Lynching Act of 2018 passed the Senate unanimously. Led by three black members: Kamala Harris, a California Democrat; Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican; and Senator Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat. Congress has made over 200 attempts to pass anti-lynching laws since 1882. More than 4,700 people, the vast majority of them black, were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968, according to the N.A.A.C.P. Perpetrators were rarely prosecuted. This piece of legislation added a section entitled “lynching” to federal civil rights law, stating that if two or more people kill someone because of that person’s race or religion, they can be sentenced up to life in prison if convicted.

Lynching could be called the vigilante arm of law enforcement the Victims of Lynching Act of 2018 changes that but the prison system even with the First Step Act just passed by Congress has a ways to go towards racial justice.   Prisons can strip people of their community and dignity or they can rehabilitate people to reenter society.  For centuries prisoners have been used as slave labor.  This practice goes on today, where private industry contracts with prisons to hire prisoners for minimum wage but the prison system takes out legal financial obligations for room and board and restitution leaving the prisoner with $14.00 to $20.00 a month.  If the prisoner works for the prison itself, they get much less.  Prison reform both in prison and afterwards is critical to helping rehabilitate people back to being contributing members of society.  Something most people can accomplish with the help of the community.

The importance of prison reform cannot be understated.  Included in the recent First Step Act passed by the US congress are rehabilitation programs for former prisoners and a reduction in mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes. This piece of legislation begins to reform the tough on crime policies started under the Nixon administration. Various scholars believe the racial and class disparate outcomes started by Nixon and today is part of the modern criminal justice system can be traced to a backlash against the progressive gains of not only the Civil Rights Movement but other social movements of the 1960’s.  We can trace the start of this backlash and the first tough on crime policies back to Nixon’s War on Drugs when he identified drug users as criminals deserving incarceration and punishment and not social reforms as alienated youths whose addiction was caused by an inequitable society.   

Furthering the criminal crackdown Reagan signed into law the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. Frontline writes that the law allocated funds to new prisons, drug education, and treatment. But its main purpose was to create mandatory minimum sentences thus the need for more prisons and the birth of the current prison system we have today. States started passing the infamous three strike laws in 1993 starting with Washington State bringing mandatory prison sentences into public policy. These three strike laws sealed the deal to build a mega prison complex. Societies attitudes changed with these polices.  Today the United States incarcerates more people than any other country in world.

The judicial system disproportionately impacts individuals in poverty and people of color thus becoming one of the main institutions holding people back from being successful individuals. The prison system as part of the judicial system adds to this by breaking up families, bringing down a person’s social network, and making any work experience become irrelevant even when the person gets out.  Prisons for the most part don’t offer life expanding opportunities but than either did the poverty that most prisoners come from.  Prisons have always been an interictal part of our societies cycle of poverty and racism that keeps people in poverty with little hope to improve their lives.

The First Step Act, endorsed by many conservatives, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Koch brothers and a number of progressive groups, including the ACLU will help prisoners earn good-time credits so they can reduce their sentences for good behavior. It would offer them more training and work opportunities, as well as the chance to earn money that would go into escrow accounts to pay for post-release expenses. It would bolster programs to help prisoners reintegrate into society after release. It would ban shackling of pregnant women. This legislation also relaxes some mandatory-minimum sentences, mainly on drug charges, and gives judges more discretion to sentence people to less than the mandatory amount of time if they are convicted.

These two pieces of legislation for progressives means things are looking up in Washington D.C. during this holiday season bringing hope to people around the country.  The Democratic ruled House starting next year also brings optimism to the new year.  Keep up the resistance never giving into Trump being normalized.  May we see more bipartisan and cooperation bringing us all a little closer in the year to come.