At our national staff conference, I briefly met Inimai Chettiar, an Advocacy & Policy Council for the ACLU. We didn’t chat long enough for me to hear her the story she describes here, but no doubt she was reeling from that experience
On New Year’s Eve, Inimai had sushi with her friend Jamal and on the way home, they were pulled over by the police. Due to perceived lack of cooperation, incomplete information, and unnecessary police intimidation, Jamal ended up spending the night in jail and has had his license suspended for a year. As Inimai writes:
“Jamal will suffer the repercussions of this arrest for his entire life. Without a license, he had to quit his job. After employment applications asked for arrest records, his political appointment is now in danger, a job offer from state government was suspended, and several companies canceled interviews.
Now he’s part of a sad statistic—one in three black men in this country have been behind bars. For an infographic overview of mass incarceration, click here.
For a compelling and comprehensive analysis of the causes and consequences of the racial injustice that is mass incarceration, check out Michell Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
