Friday, March 13, 2015

US lawyer says terror is not new to black Americans

US lawyer, founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson, was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 today.

He has gained national acclaim for his work challenging bias against the poor and minorities in the criminal justice system.

In the BBC interview today he spoke about the irony of the US talking about its fight against terrorism.

"I as a black man grew up with terrorism. This is not America's first time to be confronted with terrorism.

"Do you know that it is likely that one in three black children born now will spend time in prison."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has compared Bryan Stevenson to the United State's Neslon Mandela.

In October 2013, the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. While the United States represents about 4.4 per cent of the world's population, it houses around 22 percent of the world's prisoners.

1 comment:

Andreas said...

Between 1990 and 2009 did the amounts of imprisoned people increase by 1600%!!! The prison industry in US are run by privat companies which are partly funded by tax payers money ( http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/09/16/117661/sb1070-prison-lobby/ )
Big comapnies like Microsoft, Dell, Intel etc produce goods in prisons for cheap labor which is about 2 Dollars per hour.
( http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-united-states-big-business-or-a-new-form-of-slavery/8289 )
It seems that nobody is really interested to reduce the numbers of their prisonors!

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