This law, known alternately as the “Justice and Innocence Bill” and the “32(f) law,” was passed in 2010 but has been on hold since 2012 due to a Superior Court ruling challenging its constitutionality. If you have never been put on probation in Rhode Island, the law might seem obscure. But if you are like the tens of thousands of people who have been sentenced to probation, this bill means something very important. It means a meaningful chance to fight a false accusation.

Prior to 2010, the law allowed people to be imprisoned for a crime for which they had been acquitted, and this Supreme Court ruling reinstates the legislation intended to end that practice.  That 2010 bill, sponsored by Representative David Segal and Senator Rhoda Perry, required what would seem on its face value to be a common sense reform–that if someone is acquitted of a crime, they be released from prison.

The Segal-Perry bill was the result of a four year legislative campaign, which involved many spokespeople telling their story, strong opposition from the Attorney General and the police, an initial veto by Governor Carcieri, and eventual passage with overwhelming, bi-partisan support. In the final campaign, the legislation even received support from former Attorney General James O’Neil.

This seven minute video (recommended for anyone interested in this issue) features a description of the probation violation system’s lack of due process as explained by former Superior Court Judge Stephen Fortunato, who states “In practice, if you  can get someone arrested, you can probably get them convicted as a violator.” It also  features an interview with the late and esteemed John Hardiman, former Chief of the Public Defender, who states, “If you had all the evidence at a violation hearing you had a trial,  chances are maybe the person wouldn’t have been violated, and that is the importance of  this bill.” This was a grassroots struggle, with organizers from OpenDoors and DARE  at one point covering the statehouse with thousands of ribbons with the names of people on probation in the state.

John Prince, a long-time advocate and community organizer with DARE, has a story that is integral to the passage of this legislation.  John has not only spent nearly a decade fighting for this reform, he has spent over 30 years waiting for it, ever since he was falsely  imprisoned in 1982 for four years.  While on probation, he was charged with a Breaking & Entering, and despite compelling evidence that he was falsely accused, he was essentially railroaded by a system too quick to convict.  I say he was falsely accused, because I have spoken directly to witnesses (who are also interviewed  in the advocacy video) and talked to the person, one of the real perpetrators of that crime years ago, who falsely accused him.

As John’s case illustrates, the reform has the potential to have a broad impact but the extent is not entirely known. While there are very few, potentially no, people who are currently incarcerated for violations who were also acquitted at trial, every probation revocation and plea bargain negotiation is influenced by the fact that the defendant knows they have no recourse through trial.  There are no doubt other cases out there like John’s, cases which disappear due to the expediency of probation revocations. These cases may see the light now. This legislation and Supreme Court ruling are thus systemic reforms, with a multiplied impact due to the large use of probation in this state (the fourth highest rate in the country). In some neighborhoods in Providence, over half the adult African American men are on probation, so this reform is a unique realignment of the justice system for those communities.  In fact, no other state in the country follows the laws now in place in RI with this reform (with Illinois being the closest there is).

However, at the same time that this is a fundamental reform, it will also have a measured, limited effect.  It is not a get out of jail free card.  The actual defendant in this case, Robert Beaudoin, was not acquitted at trial until April, 2013, only one month before his two year sentence expired anyway, meaning that had the law been implemented it still would have had only a small impact on him.  Even with this reform, the state can employ a number of strong practices to protect the public whenever there is any indication a person on probation might not have kept the peace, which include holding the defendant without bail, prolonging the time until trial, and using the leverage granted by the often very long suspended sentences.  This reform only affects an individual whose case falls into a specific range of doubt—there is enough evidence to revoke their probation at a hearing but not enough evidence to convict them at trial.  Yet, even then, the actual effect of this reform will largely be to shorten incarceration periods for potentially innocent people, not free them carte blanche.

Reducing mass incarceration is ultimately a vital goal.  This was the subject of the  mass incarceration symposium last year, widely attended by policy makers across the state, and is a key goal of the Governor’s Justice Reinvestment Working Group.  And as was heard at that symposium, the main drivers of mass incarceration are that, compared to the past, we are more quick to incarcerate and more likely to incarcerate for longer.  The results of this historical policy shift are stark in Rhode Island, and the crime control benefits are not wholly demonstrated.  As we look to identify what reforms can restrain this system, it makes sense to look at an important type of change—reducing the prison sentences for people that may very well be innocent.  That was the goal of the many who instituted this reform in 2010, a reform which will hopefully now finally be implemented.

Time for a pop quiz question. Ready? In what year did the U.S. end slavery?

Most agree it’s 1865. Some historians disagree. Their answer: 1942.

True, the Triangle Trade’s enrichment of slave shippers ended with the Civil War. Tragically, however, legally coerced work continued. Some southern states were sly. Police falsely imprisoned blacks, and judges ordered lengthy sentences at hard labor.

“Convict leasing” was legalized. Douglas Blackmon describes this practice as “a system in which armies of free men, guilty of no crimes and entitled by law to freedom, were compelled to labor without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced to do the bidding of white masters through the regular application of extraordinary physical coercion.”

The penal system became the new slavery.

Still, the answer to our black-history-month query may not be 1942. Ready for a shocker? Enslavement of blacks exists today.

The War on Drugs intensified in the 1980s. In just two decades, those jailed for drug offenses increased ninefold. The Director for National Drug Control Policy, retired General Barry McCaffrey, referred to this imprisonment system as a “drug gulag.”

Mass incarceration is aggressively focused on communities of color. Despite blacks and whites having similar drug usage rates, a 1999 Human Rights Watch report states, “Black men are admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is 13.4 times greater than that of white men.” Indeed, black men imprisoned, on parole and probation now exceed all men enslaved in 1850.

Bondage for drug offenses is inflicted almost exclusively on black and brown men. Whites are usually ‘off the hook.’ Even when arrested, whites are more often given alternatives to jail. When jailed, whites’ average sentences are 16.3 percent shorter than blacks.

Enormous numbers of black bodies are placed in bondage, their prison labor extracted, for non-violent drug offenses. Isn’t this a new system of slavery? Isn’t this massive discrimination also subjecting prisoners’ families—parents, spouses and children—to excruciating emotional and financial bondage?

As a permanent undercaste, the black community also suffers wage slavery. Whites’ average household income is 68.5 percent higher than blacks—and the black unemployment rate is twice that of whites. This severely depressed income continually increases economic inequality: Average white families now have thirteen times the assets of average black families.

It gets worse: Black prisoners’ sentences continue after release.

Imagine leaving prison. Determined to lead a good life, you plan to go to college—but you’re barred from getting a federal loan. Or you need a job but, if a black man, only five percent of employers will even grant you an interview. You may be desperate for public housing assistance. You can’t get it. By law, you probably can’t receive any public benefits—including food stamps if your kids are hungry. With all these cruel barriers, what choices remain? Can we see why ex-cons often return to prison?

Again, this discrimination primarily decimates blacks.

So who should correct these many forms of racialized financial rape? Why not the white community which perpetrates and often benefits from black bondage?

The first step is education: More fact-packed articles detailing the destructive impacts of racism can be found at www.quoflections.org\race.

Second, share these injustices with friends and family.

Third, let’s seek legislation ending the War on Drugs (really, the War on Black Men). Let’s eradicate laws discriminating against ex-felons. Let’s legalize a living wage. Also, our nation has the wealthiest white community in history, primarily due to centuries of labor stolen or cheated from African Americans. In the name of justice, we who are white can advocate for long-overdue reparations to be invested in neglected black communities.

Oh, and our pop quiz answer: Even in 2016, slavery continues on a massive scale.

But unlike other students I’ve visited in the past, this group was serving time at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institution’s medium-security facility in Cranston. They were earning credit toward a college degree from the Community College of Rhode Island, and participating in the Prison Op-Ed Project, one of several training, treatment, and educational programs designed to give inmates a better chance of staying out of trouble when they leave prison.

Completing this type of course has proven a smart investment of inmates’ time and of our correctional system’s resources.  Since Rhode Island in 2008 introduced a number of new policies and programs designed to better prepare inmates for life after release—things like college courses, drug treatment programs, and job training, combined with requirements for good behavior— incarceration rates in Rhode Island are down 17 percent. We’ve also seen a six percent drop in recidivism rates and a decrease in crime.

Those numbers are encouraging, and it’s not just Rhode Island that’s seen this kind of progress.  My partner on federal legislation to reduce recidivism is Senator John Cornyn, whose home state of Texas has engaged in similar efforts. We’ve cited Rhode Island, Texas, and other states’ successes to show how programs that help prisoners avoid returning to crime can reduce our federal prison population and incarceration costs.  Our proposal is now part of the comprehensive criminal sentencing reform bill that has passed out of the Judiciary Committee and awaits a vote in the Senate.

We should pass the sensible Senate sentencing reform bill and put Rhode Island’s successes to good use in our federal system.   We’ll realize the benefits not only in our federal system, and it may help move other states around the country.

One of the members of the class I visited noted how difficult it is for former inmates to access good substance abuse treatment after release.  Another pointed out how former inmates often go without health insurance in spite of serious health conditions.  Other Rhode Islanders returning to life after prison have told me how difficult it is to get a job without clothes to wear to an interview or don’t have internet access to search for openings online. These problems also contribute to the cycle that leads former inmates to re-offend and return to our over-burdened prisons.

There are smart, well-informed people in our corrections system, with first-hand perspective of the challenges of meaningful reform. I’m grateful to the Prison Op-Ed Project for giving them a voice as we work to fix our overcrowded, expensive prisons.

This post is published as part of the Prison Op/Ed Project, an occasional series authored by CCRI sociology students who are incarcerated at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute. Read more here:

• Prison Op/Ed Project’ teaches civic engagement, writing – Meghan Kallman
• Does racial injustice still exist? Look at our schools – Aaron Carpenter
• Rhode Island charges felons absurdly high court costs – Christopher Nemitz
• Public school students and inmates need more vocational training – Darnell Hie
• Prison policies put probation and vocational training at odds – Norman Johnson
• Corporate-modeled prison industrial complex doesn’t serve society – Adrian Rojas
• Incarceration is the new slavery – James Poston
• Justice isn’t blind with data-based sentencing – David Brown
• Ending welfare entitlements opened the door to disability fraud – Dan Davidson
• Post prison services would stem system’s revolving door – Michael Wheelock
• You’re vote doesn’t matter as much as your money – David Brown
• How schools emulate prisons, and prepare students for them – Richard Pimiental
• Cars that are good for society – David DeGrasse
• PTA involvement instead of prison mentality in schools – Mustapha Bojang
• Prison is about re-socialization, not corrections – Christopher Marsich
• ACI administrator praises Prison Op/Ed Project – Ralph Orleck
• Alcohol, incarceration and what it means to matter – Laura Baumgardner
• Was Myron Magnet a genius or just a Republican? – Danny Mercure
• Ike was right: Military industrial complex corrupted economy – Christopher Marsich
• Second Chance Act deserves second chance at full funding – Christopher Rocheleau and Adrian Rojas
• Who poses a bigger threat to US: Ben Carson or Ahmed Mohamed? – David Brown
• Taking a play out of black Mizzou football players playbook  – James Poston
• Why don’t female ACI inmates have a nice big rec yard like the men – Merissa Piccoli
• Literal segregation – Philip Randall
• Religion, violence and America – Derick Smith
• They say knowledge is power, but is it? – Devin Kyle-Garris
• Time to change what we consider newsworthy – David DuBois

Like most U.S. adults, I have violated the nation’s drug laws.

The year was 1971. A freshman at the University of Michigan’s Dearborn campus, I began smoking marijuana with two of my three roommates. As police did not arrest drug offenders on campus, I never worried about being jailed.

Not so for Clifford Runoalds, an African American who was arrested for failure to cooperate with prosecutors. They wanted him to testify against a defendant in the infamous Hearne, Texas “drug bust” of 2000. A rogue police task force arrested 28 residents on the word of only one informant, on drugs, who lied about his African-American neighbors.

Runoalds was innocent. The drug deals never happened. Still, he was jailed for a month before prosecutors released him. As Michelle Alexander explains in her extraordinary book, The New Jim Crow, Runoalds was technically free—but his life was decimated. Jail time resulted in the loss of his job, his car, his apartment and his furniture.

Moreover, Runoalds was grieving the death of his eighteen-month-old daughter. Handcuffed at her funeral, which was about to begin, police rejected his pleas to say goodbye to his daughter.

Runoalds is not alone. Systemic discrimination begins with traffic stops. National data indicates blacks and Latinos are three times more likely to be searched than whites. Pedestrian stop-and-frisk is far worse. The New York Police Department frisked 545,000 people in 2008: 85 percent were black; eight percent were white.

Prosecutors and judges amplify this discrimination. According to Human Rights Watch, at least fifteen states sentenced black drug offenders at 20 to 57 times the rate of white drug offenders. In addition, the U.S. Sentencing Commission documented that, from 2007 to 2011, blacks received sentences 19.5 percent longer than whites.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics projected that one in three black males born in 2001 would be sent to prison during their lifetimes; for Latinos, one in six; for whites, one in seventeen.

The War on Drugs is an excuse for mass incarceration of black and brown people. SWAT teams do not descend on college campuses. Police do not target the homes of white suburbanites. No, they target poor minority neighborhoods. But as Alexander’s extensive documentation indicates, “The notion that most illegal drug use and sales happens in the ghetto is pure fiction.”

Poor minorities are swept up into the criminal justice system in numbers whites will never face. Those arrested are often unable to pay bail. So they languish in a cage. Faced with many months or perhaps years in jail awaiting trial, even innocent people accept unjust plea bargains. Many serve long sentences on probation—just one misstep from prison.

In addition to 2.3 million incarcerated, more than 7 million people are currently on probation or parole, many for drug or other nonviolent offenses. The fact that minorities are vastly overrepresented in this system means, as Alexander emphasizes, they constitute a new caste, a permanent underclass.

Under Jim Crow, separate but “equal” treatment was legal. This systemic racism supposedly ended in 1954 with the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision. A new Jim Crow has arisen, however, with discriminatory effects even more powerful than the blatant racism of an earlier era.

Challenges to the system’s racism is now barred by court decisions. Alexander concludes, “The legal rules adopted by the Supreme Court guarantee that those who find themselves locked up and permanently locked out due to the drug war are overwhelmingly black and brown.”

Like many young white men, I smoked marijuana. Unlike massive numbers of young black men, few of us with white skin lost our freedom and our families. We did not lose our jobs, our apartments, our cars. Nor should we—but neither should drug users of color.

Every year state and federal prisons release more than 650,000 people back into society, a population equal to the size of Boston. Rather than providing the means for a successful transition, many states hurl prisoners out into the community with little or no support. Two thirds of released prisoners will re-offend and land back in prison with a price tag of over $30,000 per year.

During his state of the union address in 2004, then-president George W. Bush said “America is the land of the second chance, and then the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.” Bush went on to sign the Second Chance Act, providing funding for prisoner reentry programs. But congress has since reduced and cut portions of a program that could save states millions in the cost of corrections.

Stable employment is critical for a successful transition into the community, but reentering individuals often encounter significant barriers in finding employment and housing upon release from prison. These barriers include low levels of education, limited vocational (or marketable) skills and limited work experience. Reentry programs have demonstrated the overwhelming need for employment and housing opportunities for prisoners released from prison and the need to facilitate the creation of jobs.

It’s understandable to be skeptical when it comes to having an ex-offender in your work environment. But did you know that if a business owner hires an ex offender, they could receive a tax credit, ranging from $2,400 to $9,900, depending on the employee? Not only that, there’s Fidelity bonding insurance that covers ex-offenders in the amount of $5,000, provided by the government and at no cost to the employer. It’s a win-win for both parties, but these incentives to hire an ex-offender are usually unknown, resulting in missed opportunities.

The Second Chance Act was passed to reduce recidivism, better society, and give those who deserve it a second chance at life. Truth is, resources are limited, though the RI Department of Corrections does its best to use what is available to make re-entry into society available. If Rhode Island were to utilize the Second Chance Act properly, or to create new legislation to help with these issues, there would be a difference in recidivism, homelessness, and crime.

• This post is published as part of the Prison Op/Ed Project, an occasional series authored by CCRI sociology students who are incarcerated at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute. Read more here:
  • ‘Prison Op/Ed Project’ teaches civic engagement, writing – Meghan Kallman
  • Does racial injustice still exist? Look at our schools – Aaron Carpenter
  • Rhode Island charges felons absurdly high court costs – Christopher Nemitz
  • Public school students and inmates need more vocational training – Darnell Hie
  • Prison policies put probation and vocational training at odds – Norman Johnson
  • Corporate-modeled prison industrial complex doesn’t serve society – Adrian Rojas
  • Incarceration is the new slavery – James Poston
  • Justice isn’t blind with data-based sentencing – David Brown
  • Ending welfare entitlements opened the door to disability fraud – Dan Davidson
  • Post prison services would stem system’s revolving door – Michael Wheelock
  • You’re vote doesn’t matter as much as your money – David Brown
  • How schools emulate prisons, and prepare students for them – Richard Pimiental
  • Cars that are good for society – David DeGrasse
  • PTA involvement instead of prison mentality in schools – Mustapha Bojang
  • Prison is about re-socialization, not corrections – Christopher Marsich
  • ACI administrator praises Prison Op/Ed Project – Ralph Orleck
  • Alcohol, incarceration and what it means to matter – Laura Baumgardner
  • Was Myron Magnet a genius or just a Republican? – Danny Mercure
  • Ike was right: Military industrial complex corrupted economy – Christopher Marsich

Reverend Joyce Penfield, of the St. Peter’s and St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Providence, has been fighting for racial and social justice her entire life. “It’s been my calling since I was 13,” she said.

Her father was a leader of the local Lutheran church in Phylo, Illinois – “I lived in a cornfield, honestly,” she said, by way of describing Phylo’s rural character – and the congregation decided it didn’t want to rent out a church property for fear of potentially attracting a black tenant. “But you raised me to love everyone,” Penfield remembers arguing with her father at the time.

“I believed what they taught me about Jesus,” Penfield told me, “that you are supposed to love everyone – especially those who have been left behind.”

She graduated high school in 1964 and became active in the Civil Rights Movement. She became a minister and considered studying at the Chicago Theological Seminary, where Jesse Jackson was educated. She joined the Peace Corp and did several stints, over the years, in Nigeria. She married a Nigerian man and became active with the NAACP when their biracial children experienced discrimination from the police in New Jersey.

When she moved to Rhode Island in 2001 she became the Episcopal minister at the ACI, and immediately realized a need for post-prison rehabilitative programs. The recidivism rate at the time, she said, was about 65 percent.

“If you have a product that is successful only 35 percent of the time, that’s not very good,” Penfield said. “But nobody cares about prisoners because they create jobs. I began to see the real problem. There wasn’t any place for them to go and there wasn’t any help for them. There are so many roadblocks people encounter when they first get out of jail. They might have lost friends, they probably lost their job.”

So in 2004, she created The Blessing Way, a halfway house for homeless former inmates trying to stay sober.

“We’re a bridge to integrating back into the community,” Penfield said. “We’re almost like a shelter, but a little bit better. We help people fly on their own.”

Physically, the Blessing Way is a three-story apartment building on the property of the St. Peter’s and St. Andrew’s Church where Penfield preaches. Rooms are rented to former inmates in exchange for staying sober, finding work and putting their lives back together – all of which the Blessing Way offers help with.

“We have life skills classes, financial management, emotional development,” Penfield said, describing some of the services Blessing Way offers its clients. There are job skills training sessions and a program that puts people to work in the community as day laborers and carpenters. Last year DARE spoke to residents about the Ban The Box law that prevents employers from asking about arrest records on job applications. Residents are required to attend drug counseling, and random drug tests.

“There are myriad roadblocks people encounter when they get out of jail,” she said. “Anyone would be weighed down. If there are addiction troubles or mental illness, it’s a miracle when people can do it on their own.”

A zero tolerance policy on drugs is necessary, Penfield said. “You must be severe and they have to leave … they trigger everyone else around them.” And, she added, “the next day you’re going to have everyone in prison thinking you’re a crack house.”

From 2006 to 2012 153 people have gone through the Blessing Way program, Penfield said, and 61 percent of men graduated as did about 58 percent of the women. She assumes men do better because the availability of manual labor jobs makes it easier for men to find post-prison employment.

The beds aren’t always full at the Blessing Way. That’s partly because of the strict no drugs or alcohol policy, and partly because it can’t always afford to take in new residents. The program operates on a very small budget, and only some of the staff take a paycheck. Penfield does not, but there are a few former residents who earn a small stipend for helping out. Penfield has housing through the church but only gets paid for 10 hours a week. She’s essentially experiencing the same poverty as are the residents of the Blessing Way.

But rather than give up, she’s expanding her focus. Penfield told me recently she looks forward to working more directly on matters of racial justice and police brutality. Today, she is speaking at a Stop the Violence prayer vigil with “faith, community and law enforcement leaders” who “will lead us in a prayer and share a commitment to justice, safety, respect and dignity for everyone,” according to a press release.

She said this tack is part of another new chapter for her.

“I think god is calling me to work with our white brothers and sisters, to help them become more aware of how we’ve unconsciously held onto our privileges,” Penfield said. “Call it white supremacy if you will, that’s really what it is.”

But she isn’t trying to shame anyone, not even the police officers she works closely with on these and other issues. In fact, she seems to approach the topic of police brutality with the same compassion and convictions that she practices with her Blessing Way work.

“I try to see every person as a beautiful flower,” she said, “and maybe some of us just need some watering.”

Proud of the ability of students to express themselves appropriately. Proud to be able to offer CCRI courses to the offender population. Proud of the quality and scope of educational services within the RIDOC. Proud of the commitment of not only Ms. Kallman, but of the entire faculty and staff associated with RIDOC education programs. Proud to be part of a team committed to providing quality educational services to the offender population.

Introductory Sociology was but one of several CCRI programs offered to offenders. HVAC, Culinary Arts, Plastering and Dry Wall, and Computer Literacy are a sampling of CCRI vocational offerings. The RIDOC Education Unit also has Adult Basic Education and GED classes offered in all facilities. During Fiscal 2015, there were 196 GED’s earned and 13 AA degrees were awarded by CCRI.

Do the participants appreciate what we do for them? In my heart of hearts, I believe the answer is a definite yes. I don’t have data to answer this question, so why do I say yes?

Recently, GED teacher Angie Barboza passed away unexpectedly. The outpouring of sympathy and support expressed by the inmates as I walked through the yard was moving and sincere. The appreciation of all that she did for them as a teacher was touching.  While my own heart breaks over this loss, the outpouring of supportive comments reinforced the pride I feel in all that they do – faculty, staff, and students.

Before the severity of Angie’s illness was known and her return was expected, one of her students wrote, “You taught me all kinds of math. Even though I was going to give up, you would talk me out of it…You give me hope for trying to achieve my GED.”

I believe that education is the key to hope for a better life. This belief is supported by data. (Read a recent study by the staff of the Correctional Education Association, the US Department of Education, and the Indiana Department of Correction on the benefits of correctional education programs.) I am grateful for the commitment of the RIDOC in its support of educational and vocational programming for the offender population consistent with its mission. The Education Unit strives to offer high quality programs on a daily basis.

• This post is published as part of the Prison Op/Ed Project, an occasional series authored by CCRI sociology students who are incarcerated at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute. Read more here:
  • ‘Prison Op/Ed Project’ teaches civic engagement, writing – Meghan Kallman
  • Does racial injustice still exist? Look at our schools – Aaron Carpenter
  • Rhode Island charges felons absurdly high court costs – Christopher Nemitz
  • Public school students and inmates need more vocational training – Darnell Hie
  • Prison policies put probation and vocational training at odds – Norman Johnson
  • Corporate-modeled prison industrial complex doesn’t serve society – Adrian Rojas
  • Incarceration is the new slavery – James Poston
  • Justice isn’t blind with data-based sentencing – David Brown
  • Ending welfare entitlements opened the door to disability fraud – Dan Davidson
  • Post prison services would stem system’s revolving door – Michael Wheelock
  • You’re vote doesn’t matter as much as your money – David Brown
  • How schools emulate prisons, and prepare students for them – Richard Pimiental
  • Cars that are good for society – David DeGrasse
  • PTA involvement instead of prison mentality in schools – Mustapha Bojang
  • Prison is about re-socialization, not corrections – Christopher Marsich

But is slavery dead, or has it been reborn in a new form? I believe slavery is still alive and is in fact thriving. Slavery has adapted to the times. Modern mental slavery imprisons the mind while the body appears free.

Now ask yourself how does one come to have a slave mentality? It runs deep. This country is built on slavery and all the policies keep minorities in an oppressive state. Here’s a little history on the slave trade and its wonders. It was the interest and business of a slave owner to study human nature. They were good at breaking men and making slaves. They all had different ideas and methods they used to keep the slaves more efficient and submissive to their every command.

The ultimate goal was to create a method or system that could keep the slaves basically enslaving themselves. Virginia in the year of 1712 had a British slave owner by the name of Willie Lynch, who created the system that would enslave African Americans for generations.

They compare the process of breaking a horse to making a slave. Cardinal principles were to break you from one form of life to another. Reduce them from their natural state in nature. The focus was on the female slaves and their offspring. Everyone knows mothers will do whatever it takes to protect their children. So you prey on that to break the will to resist.

In doing so they would get the toughest, meanest male slave, and viciously beat him in front of the other female slaves and their children, and then kill him to put fear in them. After witnessing something like this, what do you think the mothers will teach their children? The male children to be mentally weak and dependent, and the females to be independent. So take away the fathers and leave the female to raise and break the offspring in the early years of development with her natural protective nature.

Does any of this sound familiar?

What race has the most single-parent households with the mother all alone to raise young men and women? Single, independent black women. I know you heard that term before. Psychologically, the effect that slavery had on our culture runs deep. We went from overseers on a plantation, which was someone who harassed and watched over your every move, to officers in the streets. You see it every time you turn on the news.

• This post is published as part of the Prison Op/Ed Project, an occasional series authored by CCRI sociology students who are incarcerated at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute. Read more here:
  • ‘Prison Op/Ed Project’ teaches civic engagement, writing – Meghan Kallman
  • Does racial injustice still exist? Look at our schools – Aaron Carpenter
  • Rhode Island charges felons absurdly high court costs – Christopher Nemitz
  • Public school students and inmates need more vocational training – Darnell Hie
  • Prison policies put probation and vocational training at odds – Norman Johnson
  • Corporate-modeled prison industrial complex doesn’t serve society – Adrian Rojas

I was watching the news the other day and there were covering some of the unjust and discrimination that African Americans endure. And the news reporter asked a young African American woman who was a mother what she would tell her son about the young African American teenager that was gunned down by a police officer for allegedly showing aggression. The young mother said she wouldn’t tell him anything; she said she would teach him that when he sees a police officer, take his hands out of his pockets, be polite even if the officer is not, and to comply with everything he says no matter what he says, because I just want my baby to come home. Motherly instinct at its best.

Some of you reading this are probably thinking no way. Slavery is morally inhumane and it’s been abolished in this country. It says to in the constitution, the 13th Amendment was the act to abolish and outlaw such a dehumanizing thing as slavery.

Read carefully the exact words of the oh-so-important 13th Amendment so you don’t misunderstand: “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

So in other words, according to this so-called punishment clause, if you get arrested, no matter how minor or major the offense, and get convicted, there’s nothing in that 13th amendment to ensure you can’t be enslaved by your state. This clause is being used to reinstate slavery under another guise.

No wonder America’s quick to criminalize everything and lock you up—it’s big business. They hole slave trade was based on economical gain. Now ask yourself, what groups of people come to jail the most? You guessed right if you said minorities and the lower class. Think about that.

If you owned a business, what would you do to keep it running? Keep your supply and demand up, right? If you owned a prison, you would keep your customers coming back. American locks up half a million more people than China, whose population is 5 times greater than that of the United States. Statistics show America holds 25% of the world’s prison population, and only 5% of the world’s people. What does that tell you?

The prison system is big business; it’s estimated that prisons make over $3 billion yearly and that number is growing. Statistics show that black men are incarcertated six times the rate of white men, and government studies also found that black men are at a higher chance to being searched, prosecuted, and convicted more than white men, and serve longer prison sentences.

Constant social injustice and inequalities have a major influence on black males’ psychological development and life course trajectories and transitions. Mass incarceration is a new way of reimposing the Jim Crow laws to segregate. By definition, slavery goes far beyond the actual removal of freedom; it denies the humanity of the enslaved.

Racially imbalanced enforcement also means that minorities are more likely to suffer consequences that outlast their prison sentences, like difficulty finding jobs and housing, lost access to government benefits and in some places disenfranchisement. The prison system makes so much money that it encourages racist practices in the American criminal justice system.

At the economical height of slavery there were approximately four million African American slaves. Today there is approximately six million African Americans in some form of incarceration or “correctional supervision”: prison, probation, or parole. That’s more people locked up than were slaves at its highest peak.

Or is it just slavery adapting to the times? The prison system is among the most profitable industries in the United States. Despite our nation’s self-perception as a bastion of freedom, we lock up more people than anyone else in the world. But we have songs about the “land of the free”. What an oxymoron.

What’s more important to you: schooling for higher education, or mass incarcerations? Like minds will say education, because our children are most important right? You see, there’s a question mark because if you were interested and cared about something like education, you would show it in every way possible by your actions and concerns, but that’s not the case. It seems as if mass incarceration is more important.

The money that states spend on prisons has risen six times the rates of spending on higher education. What does that tell you? It seems to me they’d rather put you in prison than through school. In urban communities, they cut all funding for after-school programs, recreation centers and other extra-curricular activities. What’s left for these kids to do to occupy their time? If kids are the heart and soul of this country and hope for the future, wouldn’t it be in our best interest to help them be all they can be? What do your schools look like? Are they clean? Are the books and curriculum and the teachers teaching up-to-date? Some of you reading this might think, “who has schools like that?”, while for others this is the norm.

In all actuality, this should shock and appall you that the environment we teach kids in is not up to Grade A standards. I speak for myself when I say the schools I’ve attended weren’t up to standard. In come from the inner city urban community, a predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhood. I remember going to school in the summer and it being hot and going to school in the winter and it being too cold. Try learning under those conditions, with outdated books they used to teach your parents that still says that Christopher Columbus discovered American. If you still believe that, chances are you went to one of those schools.

Schools have adopted this “zero tolerance” policy where anything they presume as deviant will kick you out of school or even worse, lock you up, depending on what you’ve done. My point is this: we’re failing to realize that we’re dealing with adolescent kids that are dealing with emotions or feelings they can’t describe or understand, so they’re confused and don’t know how to express themselves. So instead of a “zero tolerance” policy, how about a “try-to-understand” policy!

Don’t get me wrong, I know there are plenty of teachers that truly care and love their students, but they’re underpaid with not enough resources. I think America should stop trying to criminalize everything and try to find solutions instead of spending all of that money on the “war on drugs” that never seems to be ending, due to the success of mass incarceration and waging a “war on schools”. That to me seems like you’ll get better results from if you really cared about the children. With all this being said I ask one last question: is the system set up against us? Or is it slavery in a more modern form?

This post is published as part of the Prison Op/Ed Project, an occasional series authored by CCRI sociology students who are incarcerated at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute. Read more here:

• ‘Prison Op/Ed Project’ teaches civic engagement, writing – Meghan Kallman
• Does racial injustice still exist? Look at our schools – Aaron Carpenter
• Rhode Island charges felons absurdly high court costs – Christopher Nemitz
• Public school students and inmates need more vocational training – Darnell Hie
• Prison policies put probation and vocational training at odds – Norman Johnson
• Corporate-modeled prison industrial complex doesn’t serve society – Adrian Rojas

Susan Herman, president of the American Civil Liberties Union who is in Rhode Island today to speak at a panel discussion on policing, said she is not surprised to learn that a white police officer shot a Black man in South Carolina.

“I wish I could say I was surprised,” she told me. “Unfortunately it’s not news that a Black man was shot by a white police officer. That’s happened 100 times since March. What is news is that the system actually responded and the officer will be charged.”

A constitutional law professor who has headed the ACLU since 2008, Herman said the response in South Carolina compared to the response in Ferguson is encouraging.

“It’s a sign that an awareness has been sparked by the troubling events in Ferguson, and that awareness is starting to bear fruit,” she said. “It’s possible that South Carolina is being so responsive because the American people have woken up to the fact that Black lives do matter.”

Herman said more and more of the ACLU’s work is being focused on racial issues, such as those related to the Black Lives Matter movement, because people of color much more frequently have their civil liberties curtailed. “Ever since Ferguson there has been tremendous interest in stories like this,” she said. “I think prior to Ferguson, a lot of people thought there wasn’t a problem.”

Nationally, she said, the ACLU is focusing attention on mass incarceration and voter suppression laws, both of which disproportionately adversely affect people of color. “What’s special about the ACLU is we connect the dots,” she said, invoking the famous ACLU catch phrase – ‘defend everybody.'”

She termed the amount of money the United States invests incarcerating its citizens as “staggering,” adding, “We’re stripping money from schools so that we can lock people up. It’s a great big societal mistake.”

And Herman referred to voter ID laws as “voter suppression laws,” saying, “if our public servants are not accountable to the people, there’s no limit on what they can do.” I asked her if she was surprised that a nominally liberal state like Rhode Island has such a law and she said, “It’s really just a political tool and there’s not just one party that tries to give itself an advantage.”

I asked her to give the Ocean State a grade on defending Rhode Islanders civil liberties, and she declined saying instead, “If even one person in Rhode Island is searched because of their race, that’s bad.”

“Sounding the Alarm on Mass Incarceration,” a day-long symposium at Roger Williams Law School, drew hundreds of the most prominent and integral members of the Rhode Island criminal justice system to face that very system’s flaws head on. Although the fire has been raging for some time, it was retired Superior Court Judge Judith Savage, the event’s logistical and spiritual leader, that struck the alarm.  Directors and staff from all relevant public agencies, including most of Rhode Island’s Judges, crossed from opposite sides of the aisle, the courtroom, and the prison walls themselves, to sit side by side. The event combined the gravity of a government planning committee with the openness of a public forum.

The symposium looked into Rhode Island’s prison problem in the same week that US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy declared that the “corrections system is one of the most overlooked, misunderstood institutions we have in our entire government.”  US Attorney General Holder himself recently said, “Too many people go to too many prisons for far too long for no good law enforcement reason.”

In accord, the local event’s two expert keynote speakers, Bryan Stevenson and Marc Mauer, began the morning with the conclusion that our overuse of prison at its core wastes money combating crime ineffectually and inhumanely. Despite broad consensus that mass incarceration is an American crisis, this was still a radical and controversial assertion in a room filled with the very people who daily are tasked in Rhode Island with sending people to prison.

Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, an organization which spearheaded the recent federal reform of crack-cocaine sentencing disparities, presented the room with a stark set of statistics and assertions. In the US, incarceration rates have increased by 500 percent since the 1980’s. We now incarcerate people at five to eight times more than other developed countries. One in three black men will go to prison in their life times. He reviewed a recent study by the National Research Council that concluded that while increased prison rates decrease crime, the “magnitude of this crime reduction is likely small.” From the same report he identified a simple set of causes: a rise in the chance of going to prison upon arrest and an increase in sentence length.  To reverse the trend, these rates must be reduced.

While Mauer deconstructed the crisis with statistics, keynote speaker Bryan Stevenson outlined four emotional and psychological challenges: get proximate, confront racism, remain hopeful, and brave discomfort.  Fittingly, these were the very challenges faced by the audience throughout the day.

Stevenson is the director of the Equal Justice Initiative, an agency based in Alabama that represents poor, wrongfully convicted, or inadequately represented defendants.  His TED talk “We need to talk about justice,” has been viewed over 2 million times. He spoke of hearing a death row prisoner sing while being abused. He told of hugging a child that had been sentenced to adult prison for killing his mother’s abuser as the child confessed to Stevenson of being brutally raped in prison. And he recalled being told “I just love you for fighting for me,” by a severely disabled man about to be executed. A national hero amidst the carnage of our penal system, his stories were at once heart-breaking and inspiring.

One of Stevenson’s themes was the need to confront racism, and the ugly facts of racial disparity within RI’s criminal justice system were dramatically apparent throughout the event.  At the end of the day, former Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Francis Darigan asked the audience to look at our own system for any racial bias.  This sort of examination is extremely challenging, and Stevenson provided a vision of what success would look like.  He compared the legacy of slavery in the United States to the legacy of the Holocaust in Germany. Once in Germany, he was told by a room of lawyers and politicians that Germany could never conceive of inflicting the death penalty after gassing millions in the Holocaust.

“And I think about that because I would be outraged today if I saw the nation state of Germany putting people in gas chambers, and I’d certainly be outraged if they were disproportionately Jewish,” said Stevenson, drawing a powerful comparison to America’s prison system.

Stevenson argued that slavery was not an economic system, it was an ideology of dehumanization, an ideology that, unlike in Germany, has never been purged in the United States.  A successful response to racism in America, he envisioned, would look like Germany’s response to the holocaust.

In addition, “We must get proximate to the challenges we want to solve,” Stevenson exhorted the audience, telling of how his passion and insight into this issue came from getting to know people face to face.  The power of proximity emerged that very day, as the audience heard directly from two men who had spent much of their lives behind bars.

In most similar events, speakers with a criminal record are labeled at the time of introduction–no matter their other accomplishments they are introduced with the distinction of ‘formerly incarcerated,’ making it clear to the audience that they are on stage because they were once in prison. Instead, refreshingly, James Monteiro and Luis Estrada were introduced with the accolades that they have earned outside the walls, accomplishments that would have themselves justified a place at the microphone.

James Monteiro is a published spoken word poet, the founder and director of the Billy Taylor House, a community organization that supports young adults in Providence’s Mount Hope neighborhood, and the Director of Prison Programs for College Unbound.  He also spent ten years in prison in Baltimore. In a discussion moderated by Justice O. Rogeriee Thompson of the US Court of Appeals, Monteiro spoke of peering through a tiny prison window as his son left a prison visit in tears, saying he decided at that point to stop blaming others for his situation and to take responsibility.  “It had always been your fault,” he said, pointing at the audience.  After that, Monteiro said, “Education changed my life.” He earned an associate’s degree while incarcerated, a bachelor’s degree after release, and now runs a prison education program.

Luis Estrada’s journey to the stage was nothing short of unbelievable.  He earned several degrees while serving 22 years in prison for robbery, won a motion in the United States Supreme Court from prison, and was offered a job by former Providence Mayor Angel Taveras’s law-firm prior to leaving prison.  Since his release ten years ago, he has dedicated his life to running political campaigns and assisting reentry and addiction recovery work across the state while at the same pursuing a successful career as Office Manager at the law firm Sullivan, Whitehead, and Delucca.

The unique juxtaposition of the day was highlighted when Estrada commented, “Judge Bourcier sentenced me to seventy years for my first offense,” and an audience of judges nodded in recognition of their former colleague’s actions.

The rationality for Rhode Island’s current long probation sentences was called into question by the experiences of Estrada, who will be on probation until he is 83 years old.  He remarked that on the way to the event that day he had to call to report that he would be leaving the state as the highways took him through Massachusetts.  Later that day, an audience member commented during Q&A that “There is no reason these two men are still on probation.”  While the group struggled to identify specific solutions, that point seemed like it must have been dramatically clear to all policymakers in the room.  Pieces of legislation to reduce RI’s long probation sentences have been considered in the past (here and here), and Estrada’s experience reminded everyone of the need for such efforts.

“Injustice prevails where hopelessness persists,” proclaimed Stevenson in his opening remarks.  Despite the overwhelming challenges confronted by the members of the audience, some sort of optimism pervaded the day.  Estrada and Monteiro, convicts turned model citizens, certainly served as beacons for hope. However, Teny Gross, director of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence, pointed out that Estrada and Monteiro are extraordinary.  “You have to be extraordinary just to live a normal life,” said Gross, describing Estrada and Monteiro’s quest to move from poverty to a middle class world.

Several panelists pointed to ongoing programs that offer paths to reform. Molly Baldwin, director of ROCA, stated that her organization has reduced recidivism by 65 percent amongst high risk youth.  ROCA is a nationally renowned organization in Massachusetts that piloted, amongst other things, a Social Impact Bond funding model.  In this “Pay for Success” design, a venture capital firm provides the up-front money to help the state invest in services to prevent crime and re-incarceration, and the state only pays them back if the project succeeds.  This funding structure allows the state to begin the process of retooling its criminal justice system from a mass incarceration model to a prevention model.

An array of current local efforts were also discussed.  John Houston of Justice Assistance and Brad Brockmann of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, discussed their collaboration to improve awaiting trial discharge planning in order to stop addiction and mental-health fueled reoffending.  Solangel Rodriguez discussed OpenDoor’s efforts to help felons find work.  Teny Gross described his institute’s work preventing violent crime.  Assistant Attorney General Stacey Veroni referenced the RI Drug Court, the RI Veteran’s Court, and Justice Assistance’s program to divert into community supervision those that would otherwise be held without bail.  Chief Public Defender Mary McElroy discussed legislation to “turn off the spigot” by reclassifying several petty misdemeanors, such as disorderly conduct, to civil offenses.

But the largest reform conversation was about probation. “Mass probation” is a nationwide phenomenon, but it is especially true here. We have the fourth highest rate of people on probation and are one of three states with the lowest possible standard of proof for revocation hearings.  One in 34 adult white men are on probation in this state, one in six adult black men.  In complete unison, each agency agreed that mass probation was a problem that should be tackled.

Department of Corrections Director A. T. Wall said the number of probationers far exceeds the capacity of his staff to appropriately supervise them, saying that officers must “triage” cases to deal with the overflow.  He remarked that in 2007, policy makers had come together to avert a prison overcrowding problem.  That process resulted in groundbreaking good-time legislation and a marked reduction in the prison population with little political fallout or crime ramifications (in fact, as the DOC data showed, recidivism rates actually decreased slightly from 2004 to 2010).  That 2007 discussion also included several ideas regarding probation reform, which in combination with the ideas discussed at the forum, could serve as a starting point for a renewed push.  Wall called for a followup proactive discussion to solve the probation crisis, and his concerns were reiterated by Veroni, McElroy, Colonel O’Donnell, the Superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police, and several members of the audience.

Laura Pisaturo, the new Parole Board Chair, also stated that any changes would be difficult.  “We must have the courage to implement best practices,” she said, “There are no easy solutions.”

Though participants did not come to a consensus on what the hard solutions would be, they made substantial progress for a single day’s work.  What happens next remains to be seen, but, “I’m not going anywhere,” vowed Judge Savage in her closing, offering a promise and a challenge to the audience she had brought together.