By Crystal Swann
August 6, 2012

The Children's Defense Fund held it national conference, “Pursuing Justice for Children and the Poor with Urgency and Persistence: A Community and Youth Empowerment Conference,” in Cincinnati July 22-25. Conference of Mayors President Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter spoke on July 24, before an audience of more than 2,000 child advocates and young adult leaders, as part of a panel entitled “Ending the Cradle to Prison Pipeline and Mass Incarceration- the New American Jim Crow.” The plenary discussion, facilitated by renowned Harvard law professor Dr. Charles Ogletree, took place as part of the four-day community and youth empowerment conference.

To date, Black male incarceration rates are nearly seven times higher than white males; Hispanic males have a rate twice as high as white males; and there are more adult African Americans under correctional control today than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. It's under this mass incarceration framework that the panel discussion began, as each speaker was asked to first give their remarks on the state of the issue and then fielded questions from the audience members.

Nutter, the only chief elected official on the panel, was asked to address the issue first. He outlined the many challenges facing many communities today including a mix of poverty, racial and economic disparities, limited educational opportunities and issues of pervasive community violence. These issues “create a barrier to productive and happy lives that far too many people cannot overcome. The heart and soul of this issue, at least in Philadelphia, it's about too many guns and too much access to those weapons, in enough investment in education at all levels, whether it's early childhood education on up through high school,” said Nutter in describing Philadelphia's challenges.

In Philadelphia, more than 75 percent of all murder victims in 2011 were African American men, and roughly African American men committed 80 percent of last year's murders; that's a major concern for Nutter. While outlining the challenges, he also focused on successful program underway in Philadelphia called Philly Rising, a program that works within a community to connect that community with resources to address crime and quality of life issues. Nutter's goal is to increase the high school graduation rates while increasing the college education attainments rates in his city. He also stated that his focus is on providing those returning to his city from incarceration with a second chance at becoming productive members of society. Nutter is working with his business community to offer businesses incentives for hiring those citizens returning to Philadelphia.

In his opening remarks, Ogletree, Founder and Executive Director of Harvard's Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, pointed out that many of the same issues that fuel mass incarceration in this country also fuels the Cradle to Prison Pipeline crisis. In this country, one in three Black boys and one in six Latino boys born in 2001 is at real risk of imprisonment during their lifetime.

Alexander, legal scholar and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness supported that statement. “This system of mass incarceration isn't simply a broken criminal justice system but rather a new system of racial and social control that operates in a manner that's stunningly similar to systems of racial and social control we supposedly left behind,” Alexander stated. She pointed out that in the height of unemployment and joblessness that afflicted segregated communities in many urban cities, the institutional and political response was to end the war on poverty and declare a war on drugs – thus beginning this new system of racial and social control resulting in the confinement and mass incarceration of millions of poor people and people of color.

Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, remarked that the statistics of over 2.5 million people in jail and more than six million on probation is not just about crime but about a broader political reality… a reality that is based on the politics of fear and anger. “…When people are fearful and angry they can reconcile themselves with violating basic human rights, basic human dignity can be ignored…” he stated. According to Stevenson, once an individual is swept up in the criminal justice system they are relegated to a new ‘caste system- that has them living below not just the public benefits system, but subjects them (due to their criminal record) to a legalized system of social and racial discrimination.

Other panelists included:

• Patricia Martin – Presiding Judge, Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois Child Protection Division; President, National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges

• Rev. Janet Wolf, National Program Coordinator and Director of Nonviolent Organizing to End the Cradle to Prison Pipeline at CDF's Haley Farm;

• Ndume Olatushani, formerly incarcerated prisoner for almost 28 years, including 19 years on death row;

• Zach Schiller, Research Director for Policy Matters Ohio; and

• Preston Shipp, former prosecutor in Nashville (TN) and currently Disciplinary Counsel at the Board of Professional Responsibility of the Supreme Court of Tennessee.

This was one of many panels highlighted at CDF's national conference. For more information on this panel and other highlights of the conference, visit the CDF website at www.childrendefensefund.org.