WASHINGTON — During this politically tumultuous time, the governance studies program at the Brookings Institution refocused attention on mass incarceration on Monday. An audience gathered in its Falk Auditorium for a panel discuss criminal justice reform.
Virginia’s governor and keynote speaker Terry McAuliffe condemned the White nationalists who rallied in Charlottesville earlier this month. “They are not patriots, they are cowards,” McAuliffe said. “Let us be clear: this isn’t a debate about monuments.”
He went on to describe his administration’s achievements in criminal justice reform, emphasizing that the United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. These remarks helped frame the morning’s discussion, which also aired on CSPAN and was streamed online.
After McAulliffe left the podium, four experts discussed a variety of criminal justice issues on a panel moderated by DeRay Mckesson, an activist and former senior director of human capital with Minneapolis Public Schools.
“I saw more drugs in federal prison than I ever saw out,” said Shon Hopwood, an associate professor of law at Georgetown University. He served a 12-year prison sentence for robbing five banks. Since then, he has finished an undergraduate and law degree and authored a 2012 memoir titled Law Man: My Story of Robbing Banks, Winning Supreme Court Cases, and Finding Redemption.
Hopwood said that criminal justice needs to be reformed from top to bottom, from policing to the reentry of released inmates as well as the conditions of the prisons themselves.
Brittany Packnett, who has experience as a teacher, activist and executive director of Teach for America, said “multiple systems are complicit. . . It’s not just prisons, it’s not just about police, it’s not just about prosecutors and defenders. It’s about all of this.”
