Has the coronavirus pandemic slowed momentum toward criminal justice reform?

In July 1999, I began researching and writing a (yet unpublished) memoir about my experiences as the mother of an inmate who spent most of his adult life in prison and who ultimately died in an upstate New York correctional facility in June 1999.

With more than 2.3 million Americans incarcerated (and millions more on parole or probation), surely, I reasoned, my story would resonate with other mothers who endure(d) similar heartaches and hardships living with a son's imprisonment.

Among my circle of friends and family, I knew of at least 10 black mothers with sons in prison: my target audience.

However, when I interviewed some of these mothers, I realized that most of them rarely had spoken of their pain or had ever shared their stories, whether from guilt or shame or fear of others' judgements I cannot say.

Like me, they seemed to view a son's incarceration as solely the result of bad personal choices rather than a consequence of racial inequities and injustices prevalent at arrest, indictment, and sentencing.

My own enlightenment began with books such as No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System (David Cole, 1999); Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment (edited by Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind, 2002) as well as countless other writings that revealed machinations within the criminal justice system.

In 2010, Michelle Alexander, the brilliant civil rights attorney, advocate, and legal scholar, published, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness that Forbes Magazine, called "a devastating account of a legal system doing its job perfectly well. We have simply replaced one caste system (prison) with another one.”

Author and civil rights attorney Michelle Alexander speaking at Peace and Justice Summit in April 2018

Alexander's book explores how class and race intersect in the justice system to disproportionately target and incarcerate blacks through updated versions of "Jim Crow" laws (state and local laws that legalized racial segregation in the Southern United States until 1968).

In 2013, when I started my first criminal justice blog--Outside the Walls: One Mother's Voice--I wondered if mothers (or anyone else) really cared about criminal justice reform, the consequences of plea bargaining, the problem of recidivism, or deplorable conditions inside most prisons.

Thankfully, over the past few years, momentum for change has grown, including bi-partisan support to repeal mandatory sentencing laws, calls for more progressive DAs, the restoration of voting rights to former felons,* the abolishment of bail,** and passage of The First Step Act (which initiated several reforms in the federal prisons).

All 2020 presidential candidates support and put forth agendas for criminal justice reforms.

Despite these positive moves forward, the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the issue of criminal justice reform out of the national media.

Certainly, advocates for reform continue to research, lobby, and publish papers, but I'm not sure the momentum for change can be regained.

Of course, I will continue covering the criminal justice landscape through my posts and podcast.

Perhaps, providing knowledge will create a groundswell of support for reforms.

My mission: to educate mothers with sons in prison about the criminal justice system and its collateral damages for their families.

More importantly, I encourage mothers to channel feelings of helplessness and hopelessness into action and urge them to join the fight for reforms.

Donate to an advocacy organization. Write letters to state and local officials. Show up at rallies. Organize support groups. Vote for pro-reform candidates.

My motto: To know more is to do more."

*The 11 most extreme states restrict voting rights for some or all individuals even after they have served their prison sentence and are no longer on probation or parole; such individuals in those states make up over 50 percent of the entire disenfranchised population.2) Only two states, Maine and Vermont, do not restrict the voting rights of anyone with a felony conviction, including those in prison. (Felony Disenfranchisement: A Primer, The Sentencing Project, June 2019)

**Under most bail-reform law, criminal courts are prohibited from setting cash bail in most misdemeanor cases and some non-violent felony cases. States such as New York, California and New Jersey have taken steps to ban the practice, while smaller jurisdictions are also adopting similar reforms. ("These states have recently enacted bail-reform laws" by Louis Casiano, Fox News, February 2020)