America's incarceration rate is the
highest in the world and of these
prisoners there is no group more
impacted than people of color while the
United States represents about 4.4
percent of the world's population it
houses around 22 percent of the world's
prisoners the fact is that one in every
eight black men in their 20s is in
prison or jail on any given day these
numbers should be shocking to Americans
crime rates of black versus white
citizens tend to be nearly the same the
highly disproportionate impact on black
Americans is due to the rampant systemic
racism that's embedded in America's
justice system social change agents
along with the previous administration
have been working tirelessly to stop
mass incarceration and the lack of
justice in the lack of equality but
things now are taking a huge turn and
it's not for the better the new Trump
administration is a believer in prisons
for profit and they don't see a problem
with mass incarceration the fact is that
Attorney General Jeff session has
ordered federal prosecutors to return to
the top policies against the drug
abusers that were ended by the Obama
administration in order to clear prisons
of low-level nonviolent criminals
sessions is telling prosecutors to
charge the harshest crimes they can get
he wants federal prosecutors to include
the amount of drugs in their written
charge so that it will trigger a
mandatory minimum sentence mandatory
minimum sentences are inflexible
one-size-fits-all sentencing laws that
cost federal and state prison
populations to soar they undermine
justice by preventing judges from
fitting the punishment to the
individual and the circumstances of the
offense the Trump administration
believes in sentencing people to serve
long mandatory minimum sentences in
for-profit prisons more disturbing is
that he cancelled a Holder policy that
said prosecutors should not use
sentencing enhancement motions to coerce
guilty pleas the Trump administration is
attempting to rapidly transform our
nation into a police state this
administration has a vendetta against
people of color and it's called
systemic racism Trump seems determined
to increase the number of imprisoned
people of color destroying their lives
their family's life and their
communities the Trump is only doing
exactly what he promised in his campaign
taking the most historically
marginalized groups in America and
obliterating their human rights
