Black Male Incarceration Crisis: Transparency and Education Are Key in Effecting Change - Higher Education: Transparency and education are the best ways to start changing the effects of mass incarceration on voting rights in the United States, concurred a panel of experts at a session at the Seventh Annual Black Male Initiative Conference at the City University of New York’s College of Staten Island.
“Unfortunately, we are at the tail end of a huge failed experiment in mass incarceration, and I’m not sure how we turn around this ship in a short amount of time,” said Glenn Martin, vice president for development and public affairs at The Fortune Society, a nonprofit that specializes in prisoner reentry into society. “We have 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoner population.”
At Friday’s gathering, Martin stated that mass incarceration traces back to just after the civil rights movement, noting that it has spiked and continued to climb in the last 40 years for Black males, Latinos, and Black women. It’s no longer about denying African-Americans the right to vote, but about barring those who have been incarcerated the right to vote, he explained. In addition, more behavior is being criminalized than even 10 or 15 years ago.
