Our Concern: Extreme Sentencing
In the 1980s, the United States greatly accelerated its use of prisons as part of a political commitment to prosecute a “war on drugs” and to be “tough on crime.” Government stoking of fear and of retribution paved the way to coarsening societal responses to the interpersonal conflict and personal crises that underlie violence. The result was an explosion of incarcerated persons, many with draconian sentences, and a bloated prison-industrial complex. Today, there are over 2.2 million men, women, and children in US prisons, of which some 36,000 are in North Carolina state prisons. More than 200,000 prisoners are serving life in prison, more than the entire prison population in 1972.
Our Concern: Unmet need for safety and healing from harm
Our criminal punishment system fails survivors of crime and their communities. Survivors need certain things to heal: to ask why, to have their questions answered, to express their pain and have it acknowledged (ideally by the person who harmed them), to have their safety assured, and to believe no one else will go through the pain they experienced. Survivors have no access to the people who harmed them to face them and get the answers and recognition they deserve. In addition, the system fails to address the underlying conditions that makes communities unsafe in the first place.
