American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) launches campaign for mass clemency as systemic response to racist incarceration

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is launching a years-long campaign for the clemency and release of 50,000 prisoners as a means to address “decades of racist, punitive, and degrading incarceration,” Fox News reported last week. “The Redemption Campaign” will be lobbying state governors to grant mass clemency to “older incarcerated people,” “people convicted of drug distribution and possession offenses,” “people incarcerated for technical probation or parole violations,” and people who would have received a lesser sentence if convicted under current laws.

The Redemption Campaign seeks to transform clemency from the occasional granting of mercy to individuals into an “essential systemic response” to a criminal justice system that currently imprisons nearly 2.3 million people, about one in every hundred. According to Prison Policy, the USA makes up less than 5% of the world’s population, but holds 20% of prisoners worldwide.

“Across the country, people are rising up to demand change,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero told Fox News. “They are calling for an end to the systemic racism that has defined so much of the American experience, particularly in the criminal legal system.”

“There are 2.3 million people trapped in state prisons, most of whom are Black and Brown and all of whom are being denied real opportunity for hope, healing, and redemption. Governors across the country could — and must — bring an end to this, and many of them have the power to do that unilaterally through the power of clemency,” Romero said.

According to ACLU, one out of every three black boys, and one in every six Latino boys, can currently expect to go to prison — compared to one in every 17 white boys. Upon their release, prisoners then face “nearly 50,000 federal, state, and local legal restrictions that make it difficult to reintegrate back into society.”

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