Reforming the nation’s ailing criminal justice system can help African-Americans and many of the nation’s youth, whose brushes with the law leave them with bleak futures and few opportunities, a prominent Black legal scholar and other leaders told Congress Thursday.
“There are too many people in prison and too many of them are Black, brown and young,” said Charles Ogletree, a Harvard Law School professor. “It’s the right time to look at the criminal justice system. It has been a failure,” he told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs.
Ogletree, who taught President Barack Obama at Harvard, said services such as after-school programs and mentoring can go a long way toward keeping youth out of trouble. He even cited the example of his former student, now the president of the United States.
