By Shad St. Paul
Storified by stpaul · Sun, Nov 15 2015 09:11:28
For more and more Americans finding employment, safe housing, and the ability to educate themselves to escape poverty and secure their future can be a daunting task. If you add the specter of a criminal history to your resume' this plight can seem like an impossibility, fostering a feeling of hopelessness and adding to the rates of criminal recidivism.
While new ideas about the nation of incarceration (America) and how we approach criminal justice are currently under scrutiny, we have millions of Citizens of America who have no voice in our politics and often find themselves at the bottom of the barrel. These PEOPLE we call criminals and thugs are human beings and in large part serve their sentences and become part of local communities all over the United States.
These same individuals all carry hopes and dreams of a better future for themselves and their families and are often met with resistance from the very communities that want them to change but limit the avenues of possibility by putting roadblocks in housing, employment, and education which we know are the routes for all other Americans to become productive members of society. The lens of Social and Economic Justice can be applied to move forward and allow individuals who have made mistakes to elevate themselves and begin to participate in the communities and the nation that they live in.
The History
It is important to understand how we got here. A large percentage of individuals who have a criminal history today is the result of policies surrounding the War on Drugs which started in the 1970's.
The policies enacted during the Nixon administration began the War on Drugs. This is in essence a war against the citizens of the United States. Nixon also solidifies the social stigma surrounding drug use furthering the dehumanization of drug users.
The executive branch of the government continues their campaign to address the problem and begins to see that they must treat the people that are being affected.
The US government continues to throw money and resources at the War on Drugs.
The Results
