The Root: We Can't Afford To Not Fix Justice System

Statistics released by the U.S. Bureau of Justice and analyzed by Ohio State law professor Michelle Alexander show that, as of 2008, more African American men are in jail today than were slaves in 1850.

Benjamin Todd Jealous is president and CEO of the NAACP.

Lateefah Simon is executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Reforming the nation's criminal-justice system is one of the most urgent civil rights issues of our time. One shocking fact illustrates why: More African-American men are entangled in the criminal-justice system today than were enslaved in 1850.

How did we get here? The rise in America's penchant for punishment can be traced as far back as the 1964 presidential campaigns of Barry Goldwater and George Wallace, each of whom made law and order a defining plank of his platform.

President Richard Nixon continued the trend, framing Democrats as "soft on crime" and pushing for tough law-enforcement policies in opposition to President Johnson's credo of tackling crime through a "war on poverty." "Doubling the conviction rate in this country would do more to cure crime in America than quadrupling the funds for [Hubert] Humphrey's war on poverty," Nixon told voters.
more....http://www.npr.org/2011/04/07/135203031/the-root-we-cant-afford-to-not-fix-justice-system
..Benjamin Todd Jealous and Lateefah Simon, NPR