O n Sept. 12, The New York Times took a rare break from its critical coverage of North Carolina’s government to highlight a promising development: The state is saving money and improving quality of life for its residents by sending fewer parole violators back to prison. This is encouraging, but to continue toward meaningful reform, students should press for a dramatic overhaul of North Carolina’s incarceration policies.
The Justice Reinvestment Act was passed in 2011 with broad bipartisan support. It ensures fewer former convicts return to prison for minor parole violations.
According to the Times, the law has helped save the state $50 million per year. More importantly, prison admittances have declined by 21 percent since 2011. This gives thousands of parole violators who pose little threat to public safety the chance to live happy and productive lives with their fellow community members.
Yet all is not well in North Carolina. In 2013, the state repealed the Racial Justice Act, another bold reform that allowed death row prisoners to commute their sentences to life if they could show their sentencing had been racially biased. The recent exoneration of 30-year death row inmate Henry McCollum alone calls into question the repeal, which ultimately makes it easier sentence people of color to death.
Prison reform in not enough of a priority for America’s body politic. Students must continue forcing the issue by loudly denouncing the death penalty, racial disparities in sentencing, draconian drug laws, prison overcrowding, the privatization of incarceration and the host of related ills our society tolerates and perpetuates.
