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THREAD: A few thoughts on basic things that many people don't know about the US legal system, which now cages Black people at six times the rate of South Africa at the height of Apartheid. (1)
In many jails across the country, the windows are fake. It's more important for local government officials to see a nice building than it is for the human beings inside to get sunlight. (2)
Most jails do not let people visit or hug their loved ones. Why? To force them to spend $$$ at exorbitant rates to companies to whom jails gave monopoly telecom contracts in exchange for a cut of the profit. They monetized human contact. (3) https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1342518385201045507
In the past 40 years, this country separated tens of millions of parents from their children and put tens of millions of human beings in cages for possessing plants on a list of plants the government says you can't have (4)
There are more arrests each year for marijuana than for all of what police call "violent crimes" combined. (5)
There are 400,000 human beings in jail cells as you read this who are there solely because they are too poor to make the cash payment required for their release. (6)
The US separates parents from their children and puts human beings in cages for crossing an imaginary political boundary it created through colonial invasions. (7)
All of this violence is done disproportionately on the basis of race in a bureaucracy we call the "justice system," supported by both major political parties. Most people have been taught by the media not to even think about it as structural violence. (8)
Sometimes we over-complicate things. There are many difficult, vexing, exciting questions of policy, philosophy, and life to spend time on. But there is no reasonable argument for the vast bulk of what is done in the criminal punishment bureaucracy. It should be dismantled. (9)
If you're interested in learning more about how it all works and how to think about fixing it, I've written more in the book Usual Cruelty (all royalties donated to @essie4justice) and here: https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-punishment-bureaucracy
