Reply To: Session #1: Key Takeaways

[mdsoto]

– There is an important conversation we need to have as a community about justice and punishment. Mariame Kaba questions whether justice collectively for George Floyd is seeing Chauvin convicted and incarcerated. How do we achieve transformative change in this instance? In the current system we live in, where Black and Brown folks are incarcerated daily before even receiving a trial – what message does it send if we don’t push for punishment?
– The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act does not effectively address the issues of policing and Floyd’s murder. This section of the interview with Mariame Kaba was enlightening. It revealed how policy makers can co-opt movements to create transformational change and dilute them to be palatable to those in power. It also addressed how policy can be an ineffective tool to create change.
– The myths section of “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie” was very eye-opening. The small section about community supervision is extremely relevant to current conversations around the closure of California’s Division of Juvenile Justice. County juvenile probation departments were given almost full control to create the plans to close youth prisons and communities have had to push back against the expansion of probation in order to create local continuums of care. Probation and parole don’t provide the services folks need to reenter society, they create a presumption of guilt and further traumatize our youth.