Shaka Senghor: belief

Transcript context

…Before President Reagan, there was a much higher rate of forcibly institutionalizing people into mental homes. Is that part of your ideal solution? Or you think it should just be more treatment and not so much coercion? I think that in a society that has as many resources as we have, it is ridiculous to think that we can’t treat people outside of facilities. I think people do better when they are in spaces where there’s holistic healthcare, holistic mental-wellness care. To think that we can’t do that, given how much money we spend on prisons, is pretty much a bit ridiculous. And it’s rooted in what prisons really are. They’re an extension of shadow slavery, which you know is a reality of our country. You think about the 13th Amendment, which was supposed to eliminate slavery — it actually created a loophole for slavery to reemerge in a new way. And as you know, you see that in prisons, where you get this cheap labor and oftentimes free labor, and people are exploited and have been exploited for years. But now, I think both parties are realizing it’s coming at an astronomical cost to the rest of society. This is where you’ve seen a shift in terms of criminal justice reform. You mentioned in your book, I think, that there were 36 cases of misconduct brought against you. Were you guilty of those, or are they trumped-up charges? Or how do you think about them?…

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