The Prison Law Office stands in solidarity with people across the world and the United States calling for justice for George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Atatiana Jefferson, Rayshard Brooks, and the scores of other Black, indigenous, and people of color who have been victims of state-sanctioned law enforcement brutality in this country since its founding.  The tragic police killings and the COVID-19 crisis have exposed the fault lines that have always been present under our feet.  We share the frustration, grief, anger, and pain that millions of people share, protesting the violence and systemic racism that permeates American society.  This country was built on the twin pillars of mass genocide of native peoples and centuries of enslavement of Black people.  This history never went away: it merely evolved into Jim Crow and New Jim Crow laws and policies of segregation, redlining, disenfranchisement, racist policing  of communities, and mass incarceration that traps too many generations of families in prisons or hobbled by the stigma of being formerly incarcerated.

The racism that infects our flawed criminal legal system does not end at arrest.  For too many years, the prison system has become the dumping grounds for our nation’s non-existent social safety net, and our failed educational, economic, child welfare, and health care systems.  Our country has adopted criminal legal policies and sentencing laws that only exacerbate existing inequities and wreak further violence upon marginalized communities.  As a nation, we lock up too many people, for far too long.  That is why the Prison Law Office is committed to rolling back the laws and policies that have given the United States the highest incarceration rate in the world.

The brutality and abuse that people of color suffer at the hands of police that has finally been filmed in recent years, happens every day behind the walls of prisons and jails, away from cameras, witnesses, or effective oversight.  A society that does not value the humanity of the people who live among us certainly does not value the humanity of the people in its prisons.  We must rethink prisons to ensure that incarcerated people — if they must be incarcerated — are held in environments that recognize and encourage their dignity and their human capacity for change, rehabilitation, and healing, and that improve their health and well-being.

For more than 40 years the Prison Law Office has been shining a light on the injustices and abuse suffered by incarcerated people.  We are committed, in our work, to listen — to listen to our clients, to our allies, to Black and Brown communities, to all communities of color.   We have challenged the violent and brutal abuse at multiple California prisons.  Problems continue and our work is not done.   In our Armstrong class action we recently asked the federal court to order the California prison system to stop the widespread abuse of people with disabilities at the hands of correctional officers.  We also acknowledge and applaud the efforts of  many people who live, work, and volunteer in the correctional system to  eliminate racism and abuse and improve the lives of those who are presently incarcerated.

We join people everywhere who say that enough is enough and that silence is not acceptable.  We look forward to the day when the history books look back on this long, bleak chapter with the scorn it rightfully deserves.  We applaud the many California and national community-based groups who amplify and empower the voices of the incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, and their families and who work to make this day arrive in the near future.