LATEST NEWS

The book was banned by New Jersey prisons, and I understand why: it showed me the injustice of our criminal justice system

When I heard that The New Jim Crow – a book by Michelle Alexander about how mass incarceration in America is a new form of racial control – had been banned by New Jersey prisons, I was shocked, angered and saddened. That’s the exact same way I felt when I first read the book behind bars.

At the time, I was serving a sentence of life without parole for a nonviolent drug crime in a Oklahoma federal prison. Reading the book transformed my life. It made me aware that all the racial inequities and disparities caused by the “war on drugs” aren’t an accident.

Continue reading...

from US news | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2mqaCdN