Introduction
On April 12, 2018, Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson were waiting to meet a potential business partner at a Starbucks in the affluent Philadelphia neighborhood of Rittenhouse Square. When they asked to use the restroom, the Starbucks employee refused, stating that they had not purchased anything, and asked them to leave. The two responded that they were waiting for their associate to arrive, and the employee, in return, called the police. After the apparent refusal of the police officers’ request to vacate, they were arrested and taken into custody. This event sparked nationwide outrage, an eventual settlement in favor of Robinson and Nelson, and prompted Starbucks to close 8,000 stores nationwide for racial-bias training. A pervasive culture of racial prejudice, in which calling the police is too often a first response, is one of many toxic side effects of the system of mass incarceration that has grown from decades of tough-on-crime attitudes in the United States.
As Americans, we find ourselves in the midst of the era of mass incarceration. Federal statistics divulge that we are a nation containing 5% of the world’s total population, yet 25% of its incarcerated population. A system housing more than two million inmates acts as a weaponized control system; life sentences are prevalent, felony disenfranchisement presents a number of limitations on the formerly incarcerated, and fractured families struggle to make ends meet under the crushing consequences of our criminal justice system.
How did we get here? How can a nation professed to be one of the freest on earth simultaneously lock up more people than any other country? The road to mass incarceration was paved with insidious political agendas, policy reforms and questionable intentions.
Comments: