जस्टिस फॉर अल?

And Justice for All?

Room 630 T at John Jay College is filled with students and facility members to the point where there are no more chairs left. A professional camera is pointed toward the front of the room, and everyone lends in from excitement and curiosity for the event that can shape the future.

On Dec 4. 2008, The Center of Race, Crime, and Justice presented the seminar called And Justice For All? The lecture’s main speaker was Marc Mauer, an Executive Director of the Sentencing Project. The Sentencing Project is a national organization working for a fair criminal justice system by promoting reforms in sentencing law and alternatives to incarceration.

As the people started to spilled out on the hallway, security is called to alert them that they cannot stand out of here and the guards are welcomed to sound of very disgruntle guests.

“How am I suppose to focus on the speaker if I am standing up, look at that women over there, she is actually sitting on the floor,” said student Demarky Stermberd .

The Center’s director, Delares Jones Brown, apologizes for the lack of room and announced Mr. Marc Mauer who is welcomed by a casual applause by the crowd.

Mr. Marc is one of the country’s leading experts on sentencing policy, race, and the criminal justice system. He is the author of some of the most widely cited reports and publications in the field, for example, Young Black Men and the Criminal Justice System and Americans Behind Bars. His 1995 report on racial disparity and the criminal justice system was described by the New York Times as “should set off alarm bells from the White House to city halls – and help reverse the notion that we can incarcerate our way out of fundamental social problems.”.

“How many black men are currently incarcerated, the figure has gone from 1 in 4 to 1 in 3 from the last 10 years,” said Brown.

Delores Brown set up the plan to bring Mr. Muar to John Jay for a seminar since February 2005 in the hopes he will be able to open eyes on the disproportion number of minority races in the criminal justice system and their over representation when it comes to the court system.

The 45 minute lecture dove into the topic of the prison issues that have infected are country and the reforms that are occurring to change them. Mr. Maur opened up with a well received joke about wanting to discuss his latest book for promotion then entered the history of prison system’s problems that has stemmed from the Nixon era. He offered facts on why America is the leading country in prison population, for example, there has been an addition of 1 million Americans to the prison system over the past couple of years, which has brought the total to two million. Sixty percent of the prison population is minorities and there are currently 3,000 people on death row.

Mr. Maur does not blame the increase in the prison population in an increase in crime but a change in policy. He says the policy called the “get tough” movement where more people are being sent to prison for a longer sentence is the reason for the growth. The movement includes other policies like the war on drugs or the three strikes policy that many states obtained in the 1990.

One in every eleven prison inmates are serving a life sentences which adds up to 130,000 people in prison for life, there is a man serving 25 years for stealing golf clubs and another inmate serving 50 years for stealing a video recorder,” said Mauer.

The war on drugs is the main factor that has raised the prison population. According to Mauer, there was 40,000 people convicted for a drug charge in the 1980’s and now it has grown to 500,000 to this day, an almost 1000 percent increase. However due to the country’s financial problems and the realization of the lack of help given to urban neighborhood, there has been a new movement that has call for a change to reform the justice system.

After all of the facts were stated and the follow up questions had been asked, many people were caught up in a personal conversation with the other people around them. The seminar especially surprised third year John Jay student Sabrina Pugh.

“I think that what he said made a lot of sense and the change really must start with the people who run this country. I think the most shocking thing is that there are other methods beside capital punishment to discipline an inmate and they still choose to do it. So there are so many people on death row and I know at least one of them are innocent,” said Pugh

Base on the audience reactions, it seem that the center accomplish their goal to build up awareness on this particular topic. Nicole Hanson, Doctoral fellow for the center, could not hide her excitement off of her face when the seminar was over.

“We just wanted to start a discussion among student about their own problems with the system and talk about it in their classes and hopefully be in a position to do something about it later,” said Hanson.