1. National Juneteenth Criminal Justice Commission
Rev. Willie A. Douglas, Chair
June 7, 2015
A half-century since the apex of the Civil Rights Movement, the quest for racial and
economic justice continues unabated in the United States. Arguably the most powerful
expression of that struggle today is the growing movement to end the racialized system
of mass incarceration. At the forefront of leadership in the struggle to dismantle the US
prison-industrial complex and to alleviate its negative consequences, stands the
Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted People's Movement (FICPM). The FICPM is a
nationwide coalition of formerly incarcerated men and women who are holding forth a
radical vision for justice and transformation and who are putting that vision to work in
towns and cities across the nation.
Just as the movement for justice and equality drew vision and leadership from key
organizations during the 1950s and '60s, such as Dr. Martin Luther King's Southern
Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee,
today, the movement to end mass incarceration finds the National Juneteenth
Observance Foundation, Inc. (NJOF) at the vanguard of the struggle. NJOF are men
and women of legacy re-enunciating a powerful message of freedom and equality
during this newest phase of the continuing struggle to bring the United States' practices
into alignment with its core principles.
I cannot begin to tell you the deep joy that comes to my heart as I join in with the
National Juneteenth Observance Foundation, Inc., as the appointed Criminal Justice
Commission Chairperson in what I consider a step in NJOF, stakeholders and the
community coming together to dialogue on bringing solutions to the Country’s broken
Criminal Justice System and Public Safety, in Drug Sentencing and Racial Disparities in
Incarceration.
Facts
California is the capital of the U.S. in incarceration, and the U.S. is the Capital of the
world.
On May 23, 2011 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prison conditions in California
violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment and ordered the
state to reduce its prison population of 140,00 by 30,00 people. The highest court in the
land has delivered a decision that not only admits that prison conditions in the most
populous state in the U.S. constitute cruel and unusual punishment and are
unconstitutional—but offers a lot of explicit evidence to make this argument.

2. America’s For-Prison Industry
The prison system used to be a last resort, a place you sent people when other forms of
punishment were ineffective. Now it’s grown into something much darker, and even less
rehabilitative.
Unbeknownst to many, the prison system has become a for-profit business in which
inmates are the product–a system that has shocking similarities to another human-
based business from America’s past: slavery.
In late 2013, a new report from In the Public Interest (ITPI) revealed that private prison
companies are striking deals with states that contain clauses guaranteeing high prison
occupancy rates–sometimes 100 percent. This means that states agree to supply prison
corporations with a steady flow of residents–whether or not that level of criminal activity
exists. Some experts believe this relationship between government and private prison
corporations encourages law enforcement agencies to use underhanded tactics–often
targeting minority and underserved groups–to fill cells.
“The report, ‘Criminal: How Lockup Quotas and ‘Low-Crime Taxes’ Guarantee Profits
for Private Prison Corporations,’ documents the contracts exchanged between private
prison companies and state and local governments that either guarantee prison
occupancy rates (essentially creating inmate lockup quotas) or force taxpayers to pay
for empty beds if the prison population decreases due to lower crime rates or other
factors (essentially creating low-crime taxes),”
As a result, there are now over 2 million people living behind bars in the United States.
Many are incarcerated for non-violent crimes, like the use or possession of marijuana,
and other problems that would be far better served through a rehabilitation or education
program.
The worst part is that once captured by the prison industry, inmates are forced to work
for pennies an hour, providing cheap labor for some of the most profitable enterprises in
the world, including the U.S. Military.
Today people of color continue to be disproportionately incarcerated, policed, and
sentenced to death at significantly higher rates than their white counterparts. Further,
racial disparities in the criminal-justice system threaten communities of color—
disenfranchising thousands by limiting voting rights and denying equal access to
employment, housing, public benefits, and education to millions more. In light of these
disparities, it is imperative that criminal-justice reform evolves as the civil rights issue of
the 21st century.

3. Criminal Justice System’s Impact on Communities of Color
1. While people of color make up about 30 percent of the United States’ population, they
account for 60 percent of those imprisoned. The prison population grew by 700 percent
from 1970 to 2005, a rate that is outpacing crime and population rates. The
incarceration rates disproportionately impact men of color: 1 in every 15 African
American men and 1 in every 36 Hispanic men are incarcerated in comparison to 1 in
every 106 white men.
2. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one in three black men can expect to go
to prison in their lifetime. Individuals of color have a disproportionate number of
encounters with law enforcement, indicating that racial profiling continues to be a
problem. A report by the Department of Justice found that blacks and Hispanics were
approximately three times more likely to be searched during a traffic stop than white
motorists. African Americans were twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times
as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police.
3. Students of color face harsher punishments in school than their white peers, leading
to a higher number of youth of color incarcerated. Black and Hispanic students
represent more than 70 percent of those involved in school-related arrests or referrals to
law enforcement. Currently, African Americans make up two-fifths and Hispanics one-
fifth of confined youth today.
4. According to recent data by the Department of Education, African American students
are arrested far more often than their white classmates. The data showed
that 96,000 students were arrested and 242,000 referred to law enforcement by schools
during the 2009-10 school year. Of those students, black and Hispanic students made
up more than 70 percent of arrested or referred students. Harsh school punishments,
from suspensions to arrests, have led to high numbers of youth of color coming into
contact with the juvenile-justice system and at an earlier age.
5. African American youth have higher rates of juvenile incarceration and are more likely
to be sentenced to adult prison. According to the Sentencing Project, even though
African American juvenile youth are about 16 percent of the youth population, 37

4. percent of their cases are moved to criminal court and 58 percent of African American
youth are sent to adult prisons.
6. As the number of women incarcerated has increased by 800 percent over the last
three decades, women of color have been disproportionately represented. While the
number of women incarcerated is relatively low, the racial and ethnic disparities are
startling. African American women are three times more likely than white women to be
incarcerated, while Hispanic women are 69 percent more likely than white women to be
incarcerated.
7. The war on drugs has been waged primarily in communities of color where people of
color are more likely to receive higher offenses. According to the Human Rights Watch,
people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites, but they have
higher rate of arrests. African Americans comprise 14 percent of regular drug users but
are 37 percent of those arrested for drug offenses. From 1980 to 2007 about one in
three of the 25.4 million adults arrested for drugs was African American.
8. Once convicted, black offenders receive longer sentences compared to white
offenders. The U.S. Sentencing Commission stated that in the federal system black
offenders receive sentences that are 10 percent longer than white offenders for the
same crimes. The Sentencing Project reports that African Americans are 21 percent
more likely to receive mandatory-minimum sentences than white defendants and are 20
percent more like to be sentenced to prison.
9. Voter laws that prohibit people with felony convictions to vote disproportionately
impact men of color. An estimated 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote
based on a past felony conviction. Felony disenfranchisement is exaggerated by racial
disparities in the criminal-justice system, ultimately denying 13 percent of African
American men the right to vote. Felony-disenfranchisement policies have led to 11
states denying the right to vote to more than 10 percent of their African American
population.
10. Studies have shown that people of color face disparities in wage trajectory following
release from prison. Evidence shows that spending time in prison affects wage
trajectories with a disproportionate impact on black men and women. The results show

5. no evidence of racial divergence in wages prior to incarceration; however, following
release from prison, wages grow at a 21 percent slower rate for black former inmates
compared to white ex-convicts. A number of states have bans on people with certain
convictions working in domestic health-service industries such as nursing, child care,
and home health care—areas in which many poor women and women of color are
disproportionately concentrated.
Theses racial disparities have deprived people of color of their most basic civil rights,
making criminal-justice reform the civil rights issue of our time. Through mass
imprisonment and the overrepresentation of individuals of color within the criminal
justice and prison system, people of color have experienced an adverse impact on
themselves and on their communities from barriers to reintegrating into society to
engaging in the democratic process. Eliminating the racial disparities inherent to our
nation’s criminal-justice policies and practices must be at the heart of a renewed,
refocused, and reenergized movement for racial justice in America.
There have been a number of initiatives on the state and federal level to address the
racial disparities in youth incarceration. There has been announcement and introduction
of a School Discipline Initiative to bring increased awareness of effective policies and
practices to ultimately dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. States like California and
Massachusetts are considering legislation to address the disproportionate suspensions
among students of color. And in Clayton County, Georgia, collaborative local
reforms have resulted in a 47 percent reduction in juvenile-court referrals and a 51
percent decrease in juvenile felony rates. These initiatives could serve as models of
success for lessening the disparities in incarceration rates.
Though I have yet to read The New Jim Crow for myself, all indications are that it is an
important and credible book on the over-representation, exploitation and ongoing
oppression of African Americans, and Black males in particular, by what is now
commonly referred to as the prison industrial complex. The headline to Author
Alexander Hale’s post points to a conclusion drawn from a study supporting the primary
premise of the book—that American prisons have replaced the institution of American
slavery as a profit-driven system for creating and maintaining a permanent second-class
population with little or no rights as citizens, even for those who have paid their debt to
society and ostensibly have a clean slate.
The problem is that the fact, with truth is that there are more Blacks in prison today than
were in slavery 160 years ago, without proper analysis and, is misleading at best, and at
worst, potentially damaging to the very population of Black males whose treatment and
exploitation is being protested. That’s because statistics, without the benefit of context,
analysis and critical thinking, are extremely dangerous, especially for Black people. For

6. every person who believes that the over-representation of Blacks in the prison system is
proof of the bias inherent in that system, there is at least one other who believes that
such disproportionate representation is proof positive that Black men are more prone to
crime and violence—and worse, that most Black men are guilty until proven innocent.
Statistics and facts can be used to define and defend, or to demonize and destroy. For
every tweet of this headline shared as proof of Black males being systematically
hounded and oppressed, there were others shared as evidence of the criminal nature of
Black men—which ultimately speaks for all Black men, including me. And this is the
case even when the facts that the statistics reveal prove ultimately meaningless, even
though true.
In the case of Alexander Hale’s post, the reporting and statistical analysis and context is
vague or non-existent. While the fact that today’s Black incarcerated population is larger
than the 1850 slavery population in sheer numbers (and alarmingly out of proportion to
Black Americans’ share of the U.S. population) is a shocking comparison, it doesn’t
really say much. That’s because today’s total Black population is far larger than
America’s Black population in 1850. So a more accurate and illustrative comparison
would be the percentage of the Black population who were slaves in 1850 versus the
percentage of the Black population incarcerated today.
According to the 1850 Census, there were 3.6 million African Americans (including
roughly 3.2 million slaves) in the U.S. population. By comparison, in 2010 the Census
reported nearly 39 million African Americans (not counting those of mixed races), more
than 10 times the Black population in 1850. Based on those figures, it is not plausible,
even at first glance, that today’s Black incarceration rates are anywhere near the
proportion of Blacks in slavery in 1850. In fact, nearly 90 percent of Blacks in America
were slaves 160 years ago. According the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, non-
Hispanic Blacks (including women) are 39.4 percent of the total prison and jail
population in 2009. Not even close.
So, is there a disproportionate number of African Americans in prison? Absolutely. Are
most Black people in prison? Absolutely not. Are there strong parallels between the
prison industrial complex and the American system of slavery and disenfranchisement
of Black people? Again, absolutely. Is there a higher proportion of Black people in
prison today than were in slavery in 1850? Statistically, the numbers do not compute
adequately.
Should we sound the alarm to get people to adopt a greater sense of urgency and take
action to change the criminal justice system and, more importantly, to keep African
Americans out of it? Absolutely, positively. It is with the Spirit of THE HIGHER
AUTHORITY GOD working through me, affirmatively, as a servant to be of service with
collaborative team effort through NJOF, in addressing the issues / matters of concerns
impacting African Americans administered by a broken Criminal Justice System.

7. National Juneteenth Criminal Justice Commission
Rev. Willie A. Douglas, Chair
Supreme Court Ruling: Cruel and Unusual Punishment in
California Prisons
http://www.revcom.us/a/235/California-Prison-Ruling-en.html
Prison Crisis: Local Solutions
http://truth-out.org/news/item/10076
Shocking Facts About America's For Profit Prison Industry
http://truth-out.org/news/item/21694
Formerly Incarcerated People Lead Movement to Confront
Oppressive "Justice" System
http://truth-out.org/news/item/24776
National Radio Project Prison Desk--radio stories and voices to
take action
radioproject.org/topics/prison/