Smarter Justice! by Temple Bravo

The plight of the over two million incarceration citizens of this great country of ours. It saddens me that this beloved country of ours would housed the largest prison population on the planet. So it is clear that people of goodwill have to play a proactive role in addressing and righting this grave injustice. The United States cannot continue to claim to be the moral conscious of the world and at the same time throw away over two million of its citizens. Many, if not most of these men and women do not deserve and warrant being locked up for two, three, and for some, four decades of their life. Some of these men and women are serving lengthy sentences for committing nonviolent offences. Not only is the lives of these men and women destroyed, but also the lives of their children and all their love ones. If one commits a crime, that person should be held accountable. The problem I have is the length of time vetted out for the offence, and in many cases for victimless crimes.
I am very sympathetic to the victims of crime, we cannot and will never forget them. And I truly understand their desire for the harshest punishment to be vetted to an offender. However, in doing so, does that mean we have become a society where forgiveness is only a fleeting thought? On the contrary, everyone deserves a second chance, and with that comes forgiveness. If we revisit the pages of history, we don’t have to look hard to find countless accounts of offenders and victims, be they, Native American, Chinese, Africans, Europeans, etc. The point I’m making is, what would this world be without forgiveness. Every nation, every people, and every race have wronged someone at one time or another. and that remains the undeniable truth of history. As humans, we have to forgive, without which we’d be doomed.
On a brighter note, hats off to our Senate, Congress, and White House for introducing a bipartisan bill into law “Prison Reform”. It is decades overdue, this “Prison Reform Bill” will reverse the “Three Strike Law”, “Mandatory Minimum”, etc.. Now a much needed ray of light has been shed on the countless men and women who are victims of former President Bill Clinton’s “War On Crime Bill”, which led to the “Three Strike Law”, “Mandatory Minimum”, for crack cocaine offences. Which in turn, has led to the doubling of our prison population, and have made some corporations very wealthy from the misery of millions of Americans.
If the job of the Criminal Justice System is not to reduce and implement sensible means in the elimination of the cycle of crime, then it has failed the people of this great country. The answer cannot, and will never be as simplistic as some would have you believe, “Lock them up and throw away the keys!”. Those who held that belief failed to considered the backlash in terms of, the spiral decline that such policy would have on the communities and nation as a whole.
It is now cristal clear from a bipartisan standpoint of both Houses ( U.S. Senate and U. S. Congress) that the old ways of doing business (criminal justice) is causing this country more harm than good.
I would like to encourage you to get involve in making our communities and nation a better place to live. I’ll end in the words of Marcus Garvey: “The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no farther than yourself. But the ends you serve that are for all in common will take you into eternity.”

Temple Bravo
DOC #1190151