King's legacy demands reforms in criminal justice system

[Bozita]

http://www.freep.com/article/20090120/OPINION01/901200318/King+s+legacy+demands+reforms+in+criminal+justice+system

King's legacy demands reforms in criminal justice system
BY JEFF GERRITT • FREE PRESS EDITORIAL WRITER • JANUARY 20, 2009


For the last three years, I've celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day at Ryan Correctional Facility, a guest of prison members of the NAACP. It seems right to commemorate the holiday with some of the 2.3 million Americans locked up. If King were alive, he would understand, as Malcolm X certainly would, that mass incarceration has become an economic, social and human rights problem the nation can ignore no longer.

This year, Monday's event at the east-side Detroit prison took on deeper meaning. Even inside the walls, President-elect Barack Obama has sparked hope and joy. "People around the world are rejoicing," inmate Kenneth Foster-Bey, 55 and serving a life sentence, told nearly 100 other prisoners during a program of singing and speeches. "They can't wait until tomorrow."

A nation where millions of African Americans couldn't vote 50 years ago has elected its first black president and embraced the change he represents. Still, King's dream of racial equality remains unfulfilled. The world's most powerful democracy is also its leading incarcerator. African Americans -- 13% of the population -- make up nearly half of all those in jail or prison. The nation that elected its first black president also has 1 million black men behind bars.

America's criminal justice system is a political land mine, but Obama will have some cover if he dares to step across it. U.S. Sen. James Webb, D-Va., a decorated Marine who served as Navy secretary under President Ronald Reagan, plans to push national prison reform. He has spoken with surprising candor about class, race and the criminal justice system, and the soft-on-crime tag won't work on him.

With government budgets busting at all levels, the time is right. The country cannot afford a $60-billion growth industry that has ripped urban communities and failed to make us safe. Michigan now spends more on prisons -- $2 billion a year -- than on higher education.

more...