Obama needs to reform the prison system

December 21, 2008 12:36 am

Dangerously overcrowded jails and prisons are a growing problem across the U.S. Many inmates are drug offenders.

PASADENA, Calif.

--As president, Barack Obama should not neglect the invisible young men and women who are in our prisons.

He campaigned on a pledge of change. And one profound change he could help bring about is reforming our criminal-justice system.

Today, we are warehousing 2.1 million people in jail or prison, more than any other country in the world. Many of these people are in prison because of the so-called "war on drugs," which has been a huge failure and is bankrupting state budgets.

"Drug offenders in prison and jails have increased 1,100 percent since 1980," according to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit prison- reform group based in Washington.

Our criminal-justice system is discriminatory. According to the Sentencing Project, "African-Americans comprise 14 percent of regular drug users, but are 37 percent of those arrested for drug offenses and 56 percent of persons in state prison for drug offenses.

"More than 60 percent of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities," the group notes. "For black males in their 20s, one in every eight is in prison or jail on any given day."

Many of these young men were not given the proper opportunities to obtain a quality education, and many come from abusive households. The great majority of these youths live in poverty, where violence and incarceration are common.

Don't get me wrong. I am not defending or justifying criminal acts. Individuals who commit them need to be held responsible. But we, as a society, need to get to the root of this violence, as well as balance the scales of our justice system.

President-elect Obama should prioritize gang prevention and intervention programs that include youth-education and job-creation elements. Such programs can counteract the hopelessness that afflicts so many of our young people of color.

We must change the defeatist mentality that says, "I don't give a damn--I'm going to end up in prison anyway or I'm going to die soon."

Obama ran a campaign of change, and he ran on hope. He has an opportunity to continue inspiring and motivating our youth, whether they live in the urban ghettos or suburbs. To do so effectively, he needs to root out the bias in our criminal-justice system and support effective gang- and violence-prevention programs.

A generation depends on this.

Randy Jurado Ertll is a writer for the Progressive Media Project.